Performance Analysis of Three-tiers Wireless Sensor Networks for Urban Traffic Information Monitoring

This paper presents an urban traffic information collection algorithm implemented through Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) with floating vehicles technology, which can provide a flexible, energy efficient, low-delay and low-cost wireless solution for obtaining all-weather real time traffic information that can be used for generating safety warnings to drivers, passengers and managers. The system consists of an urban traffic control center (TCC), some intersection control units (ICUs), some floating vehicles nodes (FVNs) and vast roadside sensor nodes (RSNs), which make up a three-tiers network architecture. Moreover, the system performance has been detailedly analyzed and evaluated in terms of delay and energy. And the result shows that the proposed algorithm can not only ensure the urgency data to be propagated but also effectively prolong the network lifetime. It is characterized with higher cost performance and flexibility, comparing with the current system based on single floating vehicles technologies or single WSNs technologies.