FPGA-Based Advanced Real Traffic Light Controller System Design

Traffic light controller establishes a set of rules and instructions that drivers, pilots, train engineers, and ship captains rely on to avoid collisions and other hazards. Traffic control systems include signs, lights and other devices that communicate specific directions, warnings, or requirements. Traffic light controller (TLC) has been implemented using microcontroller FPGA, and ASIC design. FPGA has many advantages over microcontroller, some of these advantages are; the speed, number of input/output ports and performance which are all very important in TLC design, at the same time ASIC design is more expensive than FPGA. Most of the TLCs implemented on FPGA are simple ones that have been implemented as examples of FSM. This paper concerned with an FPGA design implementation of a low cost 24-hour advanced traffic light controller system that was built as a term project of a VLSI design subject using VHDL. The implemented traffic light is one of the real and complex traffic lights in Kingdom of Bahrain, for four roads and motorway with sensors and camera. The system has been successfully tested and implemented in hardware using Xilinx Spartan 3 FPGA. The system has many advantages over the exciting TLC.