Wireless Sensor networks with Zigbee and WiFi for Environment Monitoring, Traffic Management and Vehicle Monitoring in Smart Cities

In this paper, the use of sensor networks in environmental monitoring, vehicle monitoring and traffic management, which are important in a smart city are discussed. Sensors in Zigbee and Wi Fi networks form the back bone of this work. Low power networks like Zigbee and connectivity provided by WiFi are needed to realize the concept of Internet of Things (IoT). The main cause of environmental pollution in most cities are industries and automobiles emitting poisonous gases. This paper discusses the implementation of a unit which senses the presence of such gases and uploads the information to a website, and also sends messages to the concerned people. The second part of this work is a vehicle monitoring unit, that can be fixed in vehicles. This system tracks the location of the vehicle, detects accidents to the vehicle and monitors its engine temperature and the presence of poisonous gases from its exhaust. In the case of the vehicle is stolen, it also has the feature to locate the vehicle and prevent it from moving until a message is sent by the owner. The third part of the work, in which, vehicles which do signal jumping are detected and penalised. This feature is very relevant to the countries like India where traffic rules are regularly violated. The density of the traffic around traffic junctions is measured and information updated in the website. An Android app is developed so that all the required information is easily available. The paper describes the hardware and software implementation of the prototype system.