DENSITY BASED TRAFFIC LIGHT CONTROLLER USING WIRELESS SENSOR NETWORK AND ARM PROCESSOR

ABSTRACT:

In the present scenario, vehicular traffic is increasing throughout the world, especially in large urban areas. As the number of road users constantly increase and resources provided by current infrastructures being limited, a smart traffic control will become a very important issue in the future. These needs have led to an ever increasing demand for an intelligent traffic control system. Therefore, optimization of traffic control to better accommodate this increasing demand is needed. In this project, we will demonstrate the optimization of traffic light controller in a city using wireless sensors. Traffic light optimization is a complex problem. With multiple junctions, the problem becomes even more complex as the state of one light node influences the flow of traffic towards many other nodes. We have proposed a traffic light controller and simulator that allow us to study different situations of traffic density. Using wireless sensors, we can easily sense the density of traffic because the general architecture of wireless sensors is an infrastructure -less communication network. The brain behind the implementation is an ARM 7(LPC2148) programmed using Embedded C, which performs processing of the real time data provided by the wireless sensors, eventually controlling the traffic flow via the LED traffic lights.

FUNCTIONAL BLOCK DIAGRAM:

Wireless Sensors Vds240

Signal Conditioning

ADC Traffic LED ARM Processor Based Microcontroller Driver Light LED

Regulated Power Supply

Wireless Sensors: A Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) is a network consisting of spatially distributed autonomous devices using sensors to cooperatively monitor physical or environmental conditions such as temperature, sound, vibration, pressure, motion or pollutants at different locations. Signal Conditioning Block: This block provides the basic functions of conditioning and amplification of the signals transmitted by the wireless sensors, before it can be further processed by the ADC of the ARM processor. ARM based Microcontroller: The LPC2148 microcontroller is based on 32bit ARM7TDMI-S CPU with real-time emulation and embedded trace support that combine microcontroller with embedded high speed flash memory ranging from 32 kB to 512 kB. Unique accelerator architecture enables 32-bit code execution at the maximum clock rate. The Analog to Digital Converter (ADC) is an integral part of the ARM Processor, thus adding to its features.

LED Driver: The LED driver regulates the power to drive the LED traffic lights in accordance to the signals received by it from the ARM to activate/deactivate the LEDs. Traffic Lights: This forms the matrix of LEDs which are grouped accordingly to emit red, orange and green lights. Power Supply: A regulated power supply unit to power the ARM controller and other connected components.

PICTORIAL OVERVIEW:

MERITS:

One disadvantage of most conventional vehicle detection methods is that they can only detect the vehicle in a fixed position. This project proposes a new vehicle detection method using the Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) technology. The striking feature of the proposed WSN-based method is that it can monitor the vehicles dynamically. The system includes a mechanism to provide obstacle-free movement of high priority vehicles such as ambulances and VIP convoys. This would greatly overcome the hassles faced by the present day traffic system. The intelligence added to the traffic control system would do away with the need of a human operator (traffic police) and thus reduce labour and operating cost. In simple terms- an unmanned traffic control.