Intelligent Transportation Systems Architecture Research Articles

Experimental Evaluation of LoRa in Transit Vehicle Tracking Service Based on Intelligent Transportation Systems and IoT

Long-range (LoRa) technology is a low power wide area network (LPWAN) technology that is currently being used for development of Internet of things (IoT)-based solutions. Transit transport, mainly in medium-sized cities where transit vehicles do not have exclusive lanes, is a service that can be improved with a tracking service using technology such as LoRa. Although some proposals exist, there is not enough experimental information to validate the LoRa technology as adequate. This article: (a) evaluates the operation of LoRa technology in a transit vehicle tracking service in a medium-sized city, based on an Intelligent Transportation Systems architecture and IoT; and (b) investigates optimal LoRa technology configuration parameters for the service. Experiments were performed in a semi-controlled environment using LoRa devices and a gateway, by measuring the received packets and the receive signal strength indicator (RSSI) and modifying: (a) distance; (b) number of devices; and (c) the main LoRa transmission parameters. Obtained results show the ideal values of parameters vary considerably with distance and number of devices used. There were very few settings of the experiments in which the RSSI and packet levels were adequate while distance and number of devices were both changed.

Sustainable transit vehicle tracking service, using intelligent transportation system services and emerging communication technologies: A review

Abstract The most salient problems of transit vehicle service in Latin American intermediate cities include: the high number of passengers involved in traffic accidents; traffic congestion caused by transit vehicles, and pollution generated by these vehicles, which increases in high congestion scenarios. To improve upon this situation, a research was conducted on the transit vehicle tracking service, which is a basic service for implementing mobility solutions for the aforementioned problems, the most relevant characteristics of this service for the context of Latin American intermediate cities were identified, and an implementation was proposed. This paper presents the four stages of the study: (a) a review of the state-of-the-art of services or systems related to vehicle tracking, including wireless communications technologies, implemented sustainability approaches, usage of special algorithms for efficiency improvement, and the intelligent transportation system (ITS) architecture used as a basis; (b) the process of identifying relevant characteristics of the service for a given context; (c) proposal of an ITS architecture for this service in an intermediate city, its requirements and the suggested technologies; and (d) development of experiments for validating usage of the key suggested technologies. The review allowed to identify the main service characteristics, with regard to vehicle positioning technologies, the recommended wireless communication technology (long range, LoRa), energy consumption considerations, and use of artificial intelligence (AI) to calculate waiting time of users at bus stops. Finally, an ITS architecture for the city of Popayan (Colombian city) considering the aforementioned characteristics is proposed, and the experiments related to the use of these technologies are described in detail.

Cybersecurity in Intelligent Transportation Systems

Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) are emerging field characterized by complex data model, dynamics and strict time requirements. Ensuring cybersecurity in ITS is a complex task on which the safety and efficiency of transportation depends. The imposition of standards for a comprehensive architecture, as well as specific security standards, is one of the key steps in the evolution of ITS. The article examines the general outlines of the ITS architecture and security issues. The main focus of security approaches is: configuration and initialization of the devices during manufacturing at perception layer; anonymous authentication of nodes in VANET at network layer; defense of fog-based structures at support layer and description and standardization of the complex model of data and metadata and defense of systems, based on AI at application layer. The article oversees some conventional methods as network segmentation and cryptography that should be adapted in order to be applied in ITS cybersecurity. The focus is on innovative approaches that have recently been trying to find their place in ITS security strategies. These approaches includes blockchain, bloom filter, fog computing, artificial intelligence, game theory and ontologies. In conclusion, a correlation is made between the commented methods, the problems they solve and the architectural layers in which they are applied.

Fleet Management and Control System for Medium-Sized Cities Based in Intelligent Transportation Systems: From Review to Proposal in a City

In medium-sized cities in developing countries, transit services without dedicated lanes have issues related to route compliance, schedules, speed control, and safety. An efficient way for dealing with this issue is the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), to implement a Fleet Management and Control Systems (FMCS). Such implementation can be performed using Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITSs), which allow integration of services and adequate standardization. This article features: (a) a literature review, related to FMCS based on ITS and enabling technologies, (b) design of the ITS architecture of an FMCS, and (c) some advances in the development of the proposed FMCS in a Colombian city (Popayán). The results of the literature review allowed identifying the most important requirements of FMCS in order to design the ITS architecture and build a prototype featuring the suggested technologies. Finally, some experiments were performed to evaluate the operation of the developed prototype. The results showed evidence of adequate operation in sending and receiving messages from and to four prototypes developed for the vehicles, also complying with the established requirements of location, tracking, exchanged data, and security. This allows continuing the development of the proposed FMCS, with some adjustments.

A Blockchain-Assisted Intelligent Transportation System Promoting Data Services with Privacy Protection.

Being able to obtain various environmental and driving data from vehicles is becoming more and more important for current and future intelligent transportation systems (ITSs) to operate efficiently and economically. However, the limitations of privacy protection and security of the current ITSs are hindering users and vehicles from providing data. In this paper, we propose a new ITS architecture by using blockchain technology solving the privacy protection and security problems, and promoting users and vehicles to provide data to ITSs. The proposed architecture uses blockchain as a trust infrastructure to protect users’ privacy and provide trustworthy services to users. It is also compatible with the legacy ITS infrastructure and services. In addition, the hierarchical organization of chains enables the scalability of the system, and the use of smart contracts provides a flexible way for introducing new services in the ITS. The proposed architecture is demonstrated by a proof of concept implementation based on Ethereum. The test results show that the proposed architecture is feasible.

Estimation of efficiency of different traffic management methods in isolated area

Currently, intelligent transportation systems (ITSs) are used at different levels (micro-, meso- and macro-levels). The positive effect of their use is in a decrease in time losses of traffic participants and an increase in the efficiency of the performance of a transportation network, which used by intelligent traffic areas. In each particular case, ITS application should be demanded and feasible in terms of efficiency and economics. In the course of the study, the authors substantiate the economic efficiency of ITS architecture development in an isolated area of the street and road network (micro-level), determine basic approaches related to the use of the local and directive traffic management methods, analyze equipment and basic coordination programs associated with different types of management. They also perform an economic analysis of the use of the considered traffic management methods and establish the most effective method for the management of the isolated area.

Proof of Concept of an IoT-Based Public Vehicle Tracking System, Using LoRa (Long Range) and Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) Services

Systems trying to solve mobility issues in cities, such as high levels of accidents and traffic congestion, have been developed worldwide. Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) services focused on urban public transport are an option contributing to solve such issues. A few intermediate cities in the Latin American context have developed some of these ITS services, which are mainly based on a tracking system for public transport vehicles. Such tracking systems have great limitations in terms of coverage, availability, and operational cost. In addition, they are commonly isolated mobility solutions, which cannot be easily integrated with other mobility services in the city because they are not based on an ITS architecture. In order to improve public transportation systems in intermediate cities, we proposed the development of an IoT-based public vehicle tracking system, using LoRa (Long Range) and ITS services. In this research, we developed the proposed system as a proof of concept. We designed and executed some experiments, in order to adjust parameters of the LoRa technology and to test its operation. This article presents the methods we followed for developing the proof-of-concept model, a description of the experiments, and their results. The results lead to conclude that the LoRa technology and an IoT-based system are adequate for implementation of a mobility service such as the one we propose, once important technical restrictions related mainly to Line of Sight (LoS) are considered. Key aspects for implementation were also identified for deploying the service (as a prototype) in the city of Popayán.

Methodology for Design of an Intelligent Transport System (ITS) Architecture for Intermediate Colombian City

Colombia has a high death rate due to traffic accidents, compared to the world reference. In particular, intermediate cities of the country have a very high death rate due to traffic accidents, much higher than the national rate and large cities rate. Municipalities and mobility secretariats have tried to solve these problems through the development of technological services, within the framework of the so-calledIntelligent Transportation Systems (ITS). However, in most cases, these services are not based on an adequate ITS architecture, therefore, interoperability and integration of services is not feasible, generates high costs and its implementation is complex to carry out. The development of the services is not based on ITS architecture, due to the fact that this architecture has not been developed. Althoughthere are works related to regional ITS architectural design methodologies, there is no methodology that considers diverse sources of reference and the particular context of the city. To encourage the development of mobility services, using an appropriate ITS architecture, we develop a methodology to design it in an intermediate city of a developing country. To formulate the methodology, we review the related documentation; we identify best practices; we consider the scope and context; and finally, we defined a logical process that was easy to implement. The present article details design methodology that we elaborate and presents the results obtained when applying the methodology in a particular case. Methodology obtained allowed the design of an ITS architecture for city of Popayán, in addition we consider that it serves as a tool for development of ITS architectures in similar contexts. ITS architecture designed willallow to plan and implement the mobility services of the city in an appropriate way.

Modeling of Smart Cities Based on ITS Architecture

Nowadays the term Smart City is widely used and almost every city aims to become Smart. Unfortunately, the definitions of what Smart means differ and there is not a single accepted one. Often a technocratic view is adopted and the actual goalmmake city more liveablemis not kept in mind. In this paper, a new approach to initiate and develop Smart City model is provided. A unified model is one way to describe the processes within such complex and heterogeneous system as Smart City. It is based on the similarity to the well-established framework called ITS (Intelligent Transport System) architecture. First, an overview of the Smart City initiatives and key principles that often require change of the way how we think of projects is provided. Further, the objectives and approach to national ITS architectures are described and discussed, mainly aiming on its limitations for the practical use especially in the context of Smart Cities. Finally, this paper provides a guidance on how a Smart City Architecture shall be established to overcome the system complexity and to reduce its dimension in terms of volume of required data flow. The new approach is based on decentralized intelligence, where a number of processes are carried out at the level of so-called building blocks. Multi-agent systems are proposed as a design tool for the particular building blocks.

Assessment of ITS architectures

Worldwide intelligent transportation systems (ITSs) are at the edge from research and development to deployment and commercial operation. Japan has already introduced ITS technology in the market and the USA and the European Union have elaborated planes for deployment. ITS in this context means communication and services based on communication technology between vehicles and other traffic participants on one hand and traffic and road infrastructure, vehicle manufacturer, and other mobility service provider on the other hand. For a successful introduction, a reliable and secure exchange of mobility-related information is a key factor. To provide such an exchange for an overall architecture for ITS and for all participants and users is necessary. With the introduction of the market, the assessment of an ITS architecture without an existing reference system arises. Since most assessment methods currently existing, measure how `good' an architecture is in comparison with another architecture. In this study, the authors describe ways and approaches how existing methods can be extended and combined to provide means for the assessment of ITS architectures in the pre-deployment phase. As a result, deploying parties should be enabled to assess an architecture before introducing it to the public.

SMART TSS: Defining transportation system behavior using big data analytics in smart cities

A smart city improves the quality of its citizens by providing access to ubiquitous services. Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) have a fundamental role in transforming a metropolitan area into a smart city. In the past two decades, many applications of ITS, e.g. city-wide traffic management and monitoring, smart parking, public transportation information services (bus, train, taxi, plane, etc.), logistics, real-time traffic, road speed limit monitoring and management etc., are deployed in smart cities. The sensors or mobile objects in ITS constantly generate mobility data and the scale at which this data is generated is witnessing an exponential increase in volumes. To store and subsequently analyze such massive data generated by sensors, new architectures are needed which are primarily designed for working with big data. In this work, we propose a big data analytics architecture for ITS. The proposed architecture has a built-in storage and analysis capability to work with ITS data and is composed of four modules, namely (1) Big Data Acquisition and Preprocessing Unit (2) Big Data Processing Unit (3) Big Data Analytics Unit and (4) Data Visualization Unit. A detailed analysis of ITS big data for monitoring the average speed of a vehicle at w.r.t. the time attribute is provided. The proposed architecture is evaluated using Hadoop thus validating the proof of concept. The empirical results are encouraging and open directions for future research.

Semantic Integration of Sensor Data with SSN Ontology in a Multi-Agent Architecture for Intelligent Transportation Systems

Semantic Integration of Sensor Data with SSN Ontology in a Multi-Agent Architecture for Intelligent Transportation Systems

Deploying Real Time Big Data Analytics in Cloud Ecosystem for Hazmat Stochastic Risk Trajectories

Abstract: The transport of hazardous materials (HazMat) is regulated by a legal framework in line with international standards, in particular the European Agreement concerning the international Accord for Dangerous goods by Road (ADR) which entered in Morocco in June 2011- BO 5956 bis, 30.6.2011. In this work, we propose a model for calculating the risk exposure of the transport of hazardous materials (THM) trajectories using the Gaussian stochastic travel time. The THD trajectory meta-model is extended to take into account the risk management dimension. The storage of the TMD trajectories is used for discovering risk patterns on the urban space by means of the mesh of Voronoi. The proposed analytical solution is deployed in an interoperable infrastructure using intelligent transport systems architecture.

Design and Field Experimentation of a Cooperative ITS Architecture Based on Distributed RSUs.

This paper describes a new cooperative Intelligent Transportation System architecture that aims to enable collaborative sensing services. The main goal of this architecture is to improve transportation efficiency and performance. The system, which has been proven within the participation in the ICSI (Intelligent Cooperative Sensing for Improved traffic efficiency) European project, encompasses the entire process of capture and management of available road data. For this purpose, it applies a combination of cooperative services and methods for data sensing, acquisition, processing and communication amongst road users, vehicles, infrastructures and related stakeholders. Additionally, the advantages of using the proposed system are exposed. The most important of these advantages is the use of a distributed architecture, moving the system intelligence from the control centre to the peripheral devices. The global architecture of the system is presented, as well as the software design and the interaction between its main components. Finally, functional and operational results observed through the experimentation are described. This experimentation has been carried out in two real scenarios, in Lisbon (Portugal) and Pisa (Italy).

A modular distributed simulation‐based architecture for intelligent transportation systems

SummarySimulations have been used extensively for evaluating scenarios, which are very difficult, costly or impractical to implement in real systems. Testing in a synthetic, realistic environment provides a means to determine the viability of solutions. Simulations have proved to be very useful in the verification of algorithms and protocols, offering tools for testing them in different situations. The simulation of vehicular area networks pose additional challenges as realistic mobility models are crucial and must be incorporated in scenario elements while applications and communication protocols are tested. Several simulators and simulation frameworks have been designed that aim to synthetically reproduce communication and mobility of vehicles as realistically as possible. The majority of such simulators merge pre‐existing networking and mobility simulators, which add issues regarding compatibility and realism. Such simulators present limited run‐time 3D visualization tools, essential for providing immersive environments. Therefore, in this paper, we propose real‐time simulation and 3D visualization for vehicular networks of realistic scenarios. This proposed simulation system generates output in real time, making use of 3D‐modelled real‐world maps and effectively generating visualization as elements are updated in the simulation. Experiments have been conducted with simulation and visualization components to evaluate delays and performance of the proposed simulator. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Recent trends in intelligent transportation systems: a review

Managing the increasing traffic is a big problem all over the world. Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) provides solution to these problems with the help of new technologies. ITS is an integrated system that implements a broad range of communication, control, vehicle sensing and electronics technologies to solve and manage the traffic problems. ITS is being used in the developed countries since past two decades, but it is still a new concept when developing countries like India, Brazil, China, South Africa etc. are concerned. In the present study we have studied four major parts of the ITS i.e., Advanced Traveler Information System (ATIS), Advanced Traffic Management System (ATMS), Advanced Public Transportation System (APTS), and Emergency Management System (EMS). Objective of the paper is to study various ITS architecture and model and review such models to get in-depth of their architecture. Hence architecture and developed models over the years of four major branches of ITS have been reviewed here to make a comparison analysis of different models that have been developed by the researchers in their studies. It will lead to the gaps in the knowledge which can be further studied. The paper highlights the conclusions extracted from the studies of different systems and also gives the future scope in the field of ITS to make it more user friendly and accessible.

Experimental evaluation of CAM and DENM messaging services in vehicular communications

The Cooperative Awareness Basic Service and Decentralized Environmental Notification Basic Service have been standardized by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) to support vehicular safety and traffic efficiency applications needing continuous status information about surrounding vehicles and asynchronous notification of events, respectively. These standard specifications detail not only the packet formats for both the Cooperative Awareness Message (CAM) and Decentralized Environmental Notification Message (DENM), but also the general message dissemination rules. These basic services, also known as facilities, have been developed as part of a set of standards in which both ISO and ETSI describe the Reference Communication Architecture for future Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS). By using a communications stack that instantiates this reference architecture, this paper puts in practice the usage of both facilities in a real vehicular scenario. This research work details implementation decisions and evaluates the performance of CAM and DENM facilities through a experimental testbed deployed in a semi-urban environment that uses IEEE 802.11p (ETSI G5-compliant), which is a WiFi-like communication technology conceived for vehicular communications. On the one hand, this validation considers the development of two ITS applications using CAM and DENM functionalities for tracking vehicles and disseminating traffic incidences. In this case, CAM and DENM have demonstrated to be able to offer all the necessary functionality for the study case. On the other hand, both facilities have been also validated in a extensive testing campaign in order to analyze the influence in CAM and DENM performance of aspects such as vehicle speed, signal quality or message dissemination rules. In these tests, the line of sight, equipment installation point and hardware capabilities, have been found as key variables in the network performance, while the vehicle speed has implied a slight impact.

Visible Light Communication Based Traffic Information Broadcasting Systems

Traffic safety information broadcast from traffic lights using Visible Light Communication (VLC) is a new cost effective technology which can draw attention to drivers to take necessary safety measures. This paper presents a VLC broadcast system considering LED-based traffic lights. It discusses the conceptual methodology for integrating traffic light road side unit (RSUs) with impending intelligent transportation systems (ITS) architecture. Results from a case study of VLC system for information broadcast are also presented.

Application of mixed-criticality scheduling model to intelligent transportation systems architectures

Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) usage has transformed public transports' vision on operation management. However, the lack of common communication interfaces has brought redundancy within on-board applications. In this context, the European Bus System of the Future (EBSF) project has specified a common architecture based on IP standards [1]. It provides a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) that permits the ITS applications to publish services and subscribe to others. The EBSF architecture enables Vehicle To Infrastructure communications (V2I) through a unique communication gateway, with managing needs of the different data flows depending on their priority in the network and the available communication resources (bandwidth).

Routing Protocols for GeoNet: A Survey

The last decade has witnessed the rapid development of intelligent transportation systems (ITS), which aim to improve transportation activities in terms of safety and efficiency. Intervehicle communication (IVC) is an important component of the ITS architecture that enables vehicles to communicate with other vehicles and roadside infrastructure. The GeoNet Project will bring IVC one step further by enabling transparent Internet Protocol connectivity between vehicles and the infrastructure. Integrating the IVC with existing infrastructure over Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) will also enable the use of multimedia services. Although GeoNet concluded its activity, several topics in the final specification were left open ended, including the definition of the car-to-car transport layer, multiradio support, congestion control, IPv6 encoding of GeoDestination, mapping of IPv6 addresses to GeoNet addresses, and GeoRouting protocol. This paper provides a survey of the existing GeoRouting protocols and evaluates the compatibility of these protocols with the GeoNet architecture.