Mobility Sensing and V2X Communication for Emergency Services

Abstract

The warning of traveling emergency response vehicles (ERVs) is performed through the help of both sound and lights when the ERV is approaching. This is not an ideal situation for, at least, two reasons: the information is received only when the ERV is very close to other vehicles; and the other vehicles cannot understand where exactly the ERV is, and which action is the best according to its location and direction. With the help of vehicular communications, this paper proposes a different approach for an ERV to be autonomously and preemptively detected. Based on the collected data through vehicle communication and sensors, primarily through Cooperative Awareness Messages (CAMs) and Radio Detection And Ranging (RADAR) data, a prediction of the ERV future location is performed in real-time, and warning messages are disseminated to vehicles just before the ERV arrival. Real-world evaluation tests, considering different warning dissemination scenarios, show that the warning messages lost during the process is significantly reduced from almost 80% down to 22%, especially when infrastructure-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-vehicle communications are used together. Moreover, 80% of the total warning messages are delivered in less than 100 ms.