An Infrastructure Based Congestion Detection and Avoidance Scheme for VANETs

In urban areas, traffic congestion is a challenging problem which creates many complications to travelers. Unattended congestion in roadways will cause long waiting times and affects individual economy. It also creates environmental issues and affects personal health. In recent years, the development of Vehicular Ad-hoc Network (VANET) provides a promising solutions for handling the congestion in the roadways. In this paper, we adapt a VANET networking model and propose a novel congestion detection and avoidance scheme for urban areas. A light weight histogram model is utilized to compute the congestion for every lane using an infrastructure based system. By computing the probability density function for every lane, the proposed model predicts congestion in advance and the rerouting strategy is initiated on time. For optimizing the rerouting strategy, two different kinds of congestion avoidance scheme are proposed based on static and dynamic modelling. Various scenarios are created in the microscopic simulation environment and the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm is analyzed by measuring the average travel time. The simulation results show that the proposed model detects congestion in priori and initiates reroute strategy effectively.