On using compressive sensing for vehicular traffic detection

The lifespan of wireless sensors installed on the road for vehicular applications is a critical issue since costly road work and maintenance operations are necessary to replace sensors that cannot be powered. For many of these sensors, the energy of communication represents the largest proportion of the total energy consumed. In this work, we show how we use compressive sensing (CS) to significantly reduce the amount of communications necessary to transmit information about traffic measured by wireless magnetic sensors installed on the road. CS is a new concept in signal acquisition where one seeks to minimize the number of measurements to be taken from signals while still retaining the information necessary to approximate them well. Through measurements of signals carried on wireless sensor nodes, and also with simulations, we show that CS can significantly expand the lifetime of the sensors used and caters for new applications of wireless vehicular sensing that would otherwise be too costly to maintain.