A survey on Wireless Sensor Networks for Urban Traffic Monitoring: Applications and Architectures

Abstract

Vehicular traffic is increasing around the world, especially in urban areas. This increase results in a huge traffic congestion, which has dramatic consequences on economy, human health, and environment. Traditional methods used for traffic management, surveillance and control become inefficient in terms of performance, cost, maintenance, and support, with the increased traffic. Wireless sensor networking (WSN) is an emergent technology with an effective potential to overcome these difficulties, which will have a great added value to intelligent transportation systems (ITS). This technology enables a new broad range of smart city applications around urban sensing. This includes a variety of applications such as traffic safety, traffic congestion control, road state monitoring, vehicular safety warning services, and parking lots management. In this survey, a review on traffic management projects and solutions is provided. The architectural and engineering challenges are discussed, and some future trends are highlighted.