An infrastructure-free traffic information system for vehicular networks

Vehicular networks are the major ingredients of the envisioned Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) concept. An important component of ITS which is currently attracting wider research focus is road traffic information processing. This has widespread applications in the context of vehicular networks. The existing centralized approaches for traffic estimation are characterized by longer response times. They are also subject to higher processing requirements and possess high deployment costs. In this paper, we propose a completely distributed and infrastructure-free mechanism for road density estimation. The proposed solution is adaptive and scalable and targets city traffic environments. The approach is based on the distributed exchange and maintenance of traffic information between vehicles traversing the routes. The performance analysis of the proposed mechanism shows the accuracy of the algorithm for different traffic densities. It also gives insights into the promptness of information delivery in the mechanism based on delay analysis at road intersections. This promptness is a necessary condition to various applications requiring reliable decision making based on road traffic awareness.