Cellular telecommunication and transportation convergence: a case study of a research conducted in California and in France on cellular positioning techniques and transportation issues

The paper describes the methodology and preliminary results obtained from a study started at the University of California Berkeley PATH program by a team of researchers from INRETS, Bron (France), the University of Technology Sydney and UC Berkeley, USA. The study continues in France within the European SERTI program. Our project intends to test network based cellular positioning methods to: 1) assess emergency calls management on national roads and motorways; and 2) give travel times estimates on road segments from the current fleet of vehicle equipped with cell phones. The initial results from the simulation work conducted at PATH show that we can expect a good estimate of travel time from cell phones used as probe vehicles. A more detailed analysis of traffic volume data and call volume data observed from the cellular network in France confirm that there are strong relationships between the cellular network load and the adjacent road network. The results suggest the need of new research directions to investigate and test the robustness of these relationships.