Sensor based traffic signal pre-emption for emergency vehicles using efficient short-range communication network

Abstract

Roads are becoming increasingly congested due to urbanization and the increased use of private vehicles. As a result, emergency vehicles like ambulances, police cars, and fire trucks get stuck in traffic and take longer to get where they're going, which may cause risk, damage to property, and losing valuable lives. The acoustic-based pre-emption technology uses the EV's siren to alert oncoming cars. Therefore, acoustic reflection from a building or other large container vehicle might cause a fall. This paper implements a vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) communication system that anticipates traffic signals using Global Positioning System (GPS) and Dedicated Short Range Communication (DSRC). Line of sight (LOS) is not required when choosing the desired range of DSRC communication, and the traffic signal unit receives pre-emption messages anytime an emergency vehicle is nearby. Thus, these messages cause the traffic light to turn green for the emergency vehicle instead of operating normally. As a result, this type of system necessitates two hardware modules, one at each vehicle On-Board-Unit (OBU) and one at each intersection Road-Side-Unit (RSU), as well as the Decision Support System i.e., Traffic Management Controller (TMC). In the hardware OBU and RSU, the IMX-6 Processor, GPS Module, and DSRC transmitter and receivers are used. The Emergency Vehicle (EV) equipped with the OBU transmits requests to the intersection unit, which is fully autonomous and can be employed as a component of the Intelligent Transportation System (ITS), negating the need for a driver in this method.