A Low-Cost On-Street Parking Management System Based on Bluetooth Beacons.

Chi-Fang Chien,Chi-Yi Lin,Hui-Tzu Chen

doi:10.3390/s20164559

Abstract

In recent years, many city governments around the world have begun to use information and communication technology to increase the management efficiency of on-street parking. Among various experimental smart parking projects, deployment of wireless magnetic sensors and smart parking meters are quite common. However, using wireless magnetic sensors can only detect the occupancy of parking spaces without the knowledge of who are currently using these parking spaces; human labor is still needed to issue the parking bills. In contrast, smart parking meters based on image recognition can detect the occupancy of parking spaces along with the license plate numbers, but the cost of deploying smart parking meters is relatively high. In this research, we investigate the feasibility of building an on-street parking management system mainly based on low-cost Bluetooth beacons. Specifically, beacon transmitters are installed in the vehicles, and beacon receivers are deployed along the roadside parking spaces. By processing the received beacon signals using Kalman filter, our system can detect the occupancy of parking spaces as well as the identification of the vehicles. Although distance estimation using the received signal strength is not accurate, our experiments show that it suffices for correct detection of parking occupancy.

Highlights

On-street parking management has long been a topic of concern for many crowded cities around the globe
We proposed a low-cost on-street parking management system based on Bluetooth beacons for infrastructure-based smart parking application scenarios
Existing solutions that rely on wireless magnetometers or image recognition-based smart parking meters are either insufficient or too expensive in terms of their high cost of human labor or dedicated hardware

Summary

Introduction

On-street parking management has long been a topic of concern for many crowded cities around the globe. According to [1], free parking imposes non-negligible economic and environmental costs on the cities. To this end, traditionally municipalities install parking meters to collect money or hire workers to issue parking bills. Traditionally municipalities install parking meters to collect money or hire workers to issue parking bills This does not solve the whole problem. Drivers still need to drive around the streets looking for a vacant parking space and their vehicles cause traffic congestion. As pointed out in a white paper [2] published by the GSM Association, the benefits of smart parking technologies include reduced traffic congestion, reduced air pollution, reduced time taken to find a parking space, and increased revenue per parking space

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