Design and Implementation of a DSRC Based Vehicular Warning and Notification System

Many cities have established Web-based road hazard report/notification systems to improve citizen´s driving safety and comfort. However, some of the systems are not very user-friendly. On the other hand, a driver sometimes does not know his/her vehicle already has some problems, but the malfunctioning vehicle is still driven on the road. Under this condition, the driver and other road users are all not very safe. This paper proposes a DSRC vehicular warning and notification system. The proposed system consists of multiple communication interfaces to provide real-time traffic warning and rapid notification of traffic information. It is capable of detecting road hazards and transmitting traffic information to the Internet through intervehicular communications via DSRC. In addition, the vehicular status self-check data can be acquired through Control Area Network (CAN) bus. With Web Services, the proposed system could report traffic information to city traffic centers for informing other road users, or car maintenance factories for car fault rescue. A prototype system was implemented, and the road test results show the proposed system can be used not only to enhance driving safety but also to simplify the notification of road problems.