Parking Detection Using Combined Magnetic Sensor and Pulsed Coherent Radar

With its potential to solve the problem of car parking difficulties, smart parking management systems have elicited a significant amount of interest from both academia and industry. Robust and reliable parking detection is a key technology for smart parking management systems. Presently, magnetic sensors are being widely used in parking detection. However, they are prone to produce high false and missed detection rates in environments that have geomagnetic interference. This article proposes a new sensing device based on the combination of a magnetic sensor and a pulsed coherent radar. The sensing device is used for parking detection in the context of Internet of Things. A Dempster–Shafer evidence theory-based collaborative fusion approach is developed to improve the accuracy of vehicle detection. Pulsed coherent radar is triggered by the magnetic sensor to reduce sampling power consumption. The prototype system is tested under various interference conditions. The results show that the combination of magnetic and radar sensors improves vehicle detection accuracy, and the lifetime of battery-powered sensor node is longer than five years.