A study of Wireless Sensor Network Architectures and Projects for Traffic Light Monitoring

Vehicular traffic is increasing around the world, especially in urban areas. This increase results in a huge traffic congestion, which has dramatic consequences on economy, human health, and environment. Traditional methods used for traffic management, surveillance and control become inefficient in terms of performance, cost, maintenance, and support, with the increased traffic. Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) is an emergent technology with an effective potential to overcome these difficulties, and will have a great added value to intelligent transportation systems (ITS) overall. In this survey, we review traffic light projects and solutions. We discuss their architectural and engineering challenges, and shed some light on the future trends as well. © 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Select ion and/or peer-review under responsibility of [name organizer]