Hybrid V2X and Drone-based System for Road Condition Monitoring

Effective and reliable road condition monitoring systems are essential for ensuring the safety and utility of transportation systems. This paper presents a road condition monitoring system based on a hybrid approach that combines Vehicle-to-Everything (V2X) communication and drone-based sensing. The proposed system architecture consists of vehicles equipped with sensors for V2X communication, aerial drones for wide-area coverage, and a Central Monitoring Unit (CMU) that serves as a hub for data processing and acts as a decision maker: Real-time data collection from vehicles and drones, encoding, transmission, and processing at the CMU facilitate timely insights into road conditions, traffic congestion patterns, and other road safety concerns. Security protocols ensure the integrity and confidentiality of data while data storage mechanisms offer scalability and high performance. This paper further explores sensor deployment strategies to optimize data collection, and scenario determination to guide the selection of data sources. The communication protocols for V2X and drones, along with security mechanisms and data storage solutions, are meticulously chosen to meet system requirements. The proposed system efficiently monitors public road infrastructure, adapts to varying scenarios, and ensures cost-effectiveness. This hybrid system is designed to integrate the latest emerging technologies and address the challenges of road condition monitoring, enhancing transportation safety, efficiency, and sustainability.

I. Introduction

Transportation systems rely heavily on the condition of the roads for both passenger and freight transport. Road conditions define the quality of rides, congestion, accidents and many other related aspects. In order to improve the safety and reliability of road based travel, factors such as road visibility, surface condition and weather are highly influential. Thus the quality of the road condition is crucial for all stakeholders such as consumers, public transportation departments and emergency responders for decision making and risk mitigation [1].