Road traffic monitoring using a wireless vehicle sensor network

With the advancement of micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) technologies, wireless sensor networks have opened new vistas for a wide range of application domains. These sensor nodes usually comprise small, low-power devices that integrate sensors and actuators with limited on-board processing and wireless communication capabilities. One of the most important applications is target tracking and monitoring. Here a novel wireless vehicle monitoring system that is able to detect, classify and determine the direction of travel of vehicles on a two-lane road is proposed. Each vehicle detection node features multiple sensors including magnetometer, accelerometer, infrared and acoustic microphone with a two-node structure for cooperative monitoring. The results show that the system was capable of classifying the vehicle type (using vehicle weight) and their directional of travel with high accuracy.