Prototyping A Low Cost and Scalable Wireless Sensor Network for Traffic Measurement

In this project, the author will develop low cost, low profile, and energy self sufficient sensor modules for different applications of intelligent transportation systems. The proposed sensors harvest the mechanical vibration in street pavement and convert it to electrical energy for operation of sensors. As an important application of this architecture, prototyping and field evaluation will be done for a variation of the proposed sensors that measure quantities such as traffic volume, speed, density, and distribution of vehicle lengths. Compared to the existing solutions, the proposed architecture is economical, easy to install, easy to maintain, and energy self sufficient. The authors expect the following outcome for this project: (i) Architectural design, development, and implementation of wireless sensors that harvest their energy from vibration in the road pavements; (ii) Signal processing techniques and algorithms to convert raw data of sensors into quantities such as space mean speed, vehicle length, etc. and, (iii) reports on road evaluation of the developed sensor in field experiments and simulations.