Smart Parking: An Application of Optical Wireless Sensor Network

Parking problems are commonplace in most major cities. The limited availability of parking results in traffic congestion, air pollution as well as driver frustration. The price for parking expansion is usually prohibitive or extremely high. Recently researchers turned to applying technologies for efficient parking management. In our previous work, we have developed an optical wireless sensor network (WSN) for traffic monitoring. We have demonstrated our system to the public in several exhibitions. It is realized that this simple invention could be applied to monitor vehicles in a parking garage. The system can then inform drivers of the number of available parking spaces and in which area should they be directed to. This kind of system should avoid driver´s frustration in trying endlessly to find a parking space in a crowded parking garage. This paper describes our work to modify our original WSN and applies it to parking garages. Problems associated to applying our original WSN to parking garage are explained, and solutions are proposed