Decision-tree based green driving suggestion system for carbon emission reduction

With the growing awareness on environmental protection, the reduction of fuel consumption and carbon dioxide (CO₂) emission have been receiving considerable research interests. With the advances in vehicular ad-hoc network (VANET) technology, a green driving suggestion system is proposed to minimize the carbon emission by enhancing the intersection throughputs and providing drivers the best-economic driving suggestions. The idea of this work is to let the signal controllers (with built-in RSU) broadcast the signal countdown message and waiting queue information to the vehicles nearby the intersection, extending the range of drivers´ visual contact to the signal. With these information, on-board unit (OBU) can determine the best economic driving speed and provide drivers´ suggestions while maintaining the max throughput within a cycle time. The goal of this work is to demonstrate the advantages of reducing vehicles fuel consumption as well as CO₂ emission by minimizing the unnecessary acceleration, brakes and stops. Simulation results vividly shows that CO₂ emission can be reduced by 4 percent to 20 percent under different vehicle per hour (vph) cases following the proposed scheme.