iITLMA, an Intelligent Traffic Light Management Algorithm based on Wireless Sensor Networks

The rapid increase of vehicle population in many world cities implies the increase of road congestion and accidents. Fortunately, intelligent transport systems (ITS) with traffic signals come to solve or at lease minimize the road problems by guaranteeing for instance safe driving at road intersections. However, they can disturb and reduce the traffic fluency due to the queue delay at each traffic flow if environmental information is not taken into account. This paper aims to overcome the above concern by studying the use of distributed systems to implement intelligent transport systems through a wireless sensor network. The proposed solution is a combination of a detection unit and two communicating sensors deployed on the tracks that can react to the passage of a vehicle. This work focuses on a four-lane intersection and an algorithm allowing sensors to cooperate and manage traffic in real time according to traffic conditions is developed. The experiment area where data have been collected is Bujumbura city, the capital of Burundi. The results of data computation show that our algorithm allows a reduction of 10% in waiting time in the case of rush hours and 32% in the case of normal hours. It leads also to the maximization of the number of vehicles passing through each intersection, which allows an improvement of road safety by reducing road accidents.