Vehicle detection through wireless vehicular communication

Abstract

Vehicles in the future are anticipated to have the ability to communicate and exchange useful information in order to avoid collisions. However, for this cooperation to be possible, all vehicles will have to be equipped with compatible wireless modules, based on, e.g. IEEE 802.11p (used in ITS-G5 or WAVE), which implements intelligent transport systems operating in the 5 GHz frequency band. During the implementation phase of the system, there will be many older vehicles without such equipment that can cause hazard as information about them will not be available to vehicles equipped with IEEE 802.11p modules. In this paper, we present a system to be used as a roadside unit (RSU), developed explicitly for infrastructure-to-vehicle (I2V) communication that can solve the aforementioned traffic safety problems. The system consists of a universal medium-range radar (UMRR) and an IEEE 802.11p modem integrated together to detect vehicles, with or without communication capabilities, and forward their position and speed vectors to vehicles, with IEEE 802.11p modules installed, for collision avoidance. Tests have been performed by using our system in parallel with vehicles in which IEEE 802.11p modules are installed and comparing the content in the Cooperative Awareness Messages obtained from both systems. Accuracy tests have been performed in order to verify the system, and Kalman filtering is applied on the radar data to improve the accuracy of the system further.