Estimating road traffic congestion from cellular handoff information using cell-based neural networks and K-means clustering

This research proposes alternative methods for estimating degrees of road traffic congestion by using cell dwell time (CDT) information available from cellular networks. CDT is the duration that a cellular phone remains associated to a base station between handoff events. As a phone in a vehicle travels along a road having different degrees of congestion, the value of CDT varies accordingly. Measurements of CDT were taken and classified into one of the three degrees of congestion using 1) K-means clustering algorithm and 2) backpropagation neural network. These machine-assigned classifications were then compared against human opinion to assess the accuracy. The results demonstrate the feasibility of using K-means and neural networks in classifying degrees of traffic congestion and that the neural network approach performs well for this task.