A self-adapting data collection approach in wireless sensor networks for urban traffic information monitoring

Wireless sensor networks (WSN) offer the potential to significantly improve the efficiency of existing intelligent transportation systems(ITS). Currently, collecting urban traffic information for traffic planning and management based on single floating vehicle technology has the disadvantages of long data packet delivery delay and big delay dithering. The usage of WSN in ITS is expected to be able to overcome the above difficulties. This paper proposes hybrid traffic information collection and communication algorithm based on WSN and floating vehicle technologies. And a simulation to analyze and evaluate the algorithm's performances is implemented. The result shows that the proposed algorithm can ensure the urgency data to be propagated effectively. It is characterized with higher cost performance, flexibility and control efficiency, comparing with the current ITS system based on single floating vehicle technologies or single WSN technologies.