Traffic Information System To Deliver In-Vehicle Messages On Pre-Defined Routes Using Dsrc Based V2V Communication

Abstract

Today, US highways are at an age where they require more reconstruction and repair, resulting in more work zones. At the same time, highway traffic volumes are at an all-time high and will only keep rising in the foreseeable future. The growth in road miles is not in proportion to the demand, which is resulting in rapid deterioration of the nation’s roadways. Creating work zones on congested highways and in dense urban areas is the only solution for the transportation agencies to ensure that the roads remain usable. Every year there are several traffic incidents on the roads with work zones and studies have shown that most of these work zone crashes involve rear-ending the vehicle in front usually at the end of a traffic queue. This paper describes the architecture and functionality of a work zone traffic information system using Dedicated Short Range Communication (DSRC) based vehicle to vehicle communication and a newly designed hopping algorithm to resolve this problem. Our proposed hopping algorithm can deliver in-vehicle messages transmitted by a roadside unit installed at work zone site to far away vehicles travelling towards work zone on pre-defined routes. Our newly designed hopping algorithm uses rectangular regions to define a hopping route and can hop messages to vehicles on multiple routes at the same time without the risk of creating a broadcast storm. Although, the messages hopped by our proposed hopping algorithm will generally be applicable to the vehicles on only one side of the road (travelling towards work zone), the DSRC equipped vehicles present on both sides of the road will participate in hopping to maximize the number of available hopping nodes in situations with lighter traffic flow and/or low DSRC market penetration. Furthermore, our hopping algorithm increases message security by not requiring any hopping nodes (i.e., DSRC equipped vehicles) to modify the contents of the hopped message. We have also performed numerical simulations to evaluate the performance of our hopping algorithm. The simulation results show that the proposed hopping algorithm works as expected and successfully disseminate DSRC messages along a pre-defined route.