GENERATING TRAFFIC INFORMATION THROUGH MOBILE

MESSAGING

Rajni Jindal and Ankur Gupta

Delhi College of Engineering, Bawana Road, Delhi, India

Keywords: Information Systems, Traffic Management, Mobile Applications, Personal Communication Systems.

Abstract: The paper proposes a new means of generating traffic information within a traffic information system by

having mobile users message the traffic data to the system. This paper is a part of a work in progress to

propose and implement an Open Traffic Information System (OTIS). All existing TISs either require

significant investments in new infrastructure or depend on third party sources to generate traffic information

whereas the proposed system could be instantaneously deployed over the existing cellular network.

1 INTRODUCTION

With traffic congestions on the roads now becoming

routine phenomena there is an urgent need to have a

system in place that makes a user more informative

regarding the traffic conditions on the route that he

may be visiting thereby giving him more control

over his time. This paper is a part of a work in

progress to propose and implement an Open Traffic

Information System (OTIS) where the users moving

on the roads or at the traffic sites are able to update

the system regarding the traffic conditions using the

Short Message Service (SMS) and in the process

help other users in getting latest traffic updates from

the system. The system will be open in the sense that

those who will be benefiting from the system will

also be the ones generating the information for the

system. In the proposed system the gathering and

dissemination of information will take place through

SMS that makes this system instantaneously

deployable over the existing cellular network

architecture. SMS is used as means of

communication between the system and the user due

to its low cost and it being a set feature of the mobile

telecommunication standards. For developing

countries like India where traffic congestion is high

in the cities, using SMSs to send and/or receive

traffic updates is a viable option.

This paper is organized as follows: Section 2

discusses related work. Section 3 presents the

proposed system in detail. Section 4 describes the

system implementation while Section 5 performs

analysis of the system. Finally, Section 6 concludes

the paper along with the future work.

2 RELATED WORK

Some systems that have been suggested up to now

rely on third party content providers for generating

the traffic information or require installation of

separate hardware to generate the traffic

information. In the traffic information system

suggested in (Balke et al. 2002) traffic information is

generated by on-line Internet sources like local radio

stations, weather reports, road works etc. which may

not be able to provide real-time up-to-date.

Another system, SOTIS (

Wischhof et al. 2003),

makes use of ad-hoc inter vehicle communication

(IVC) for generating traffic information. The SOTIS

system requires fitting of GPS and other radio

equipment on the registered vehicles which then

start generating traffic information within a certain

radius and transfer it to other registered vehicles

over radio links. However, this system cannot

provide information of any accidents, road works or

other conditions that cannot be tracked by the

vehicle’s equipment.

Some systems such as Mapunity

(http://www.mapunity.in) work by mapping mobile

user density into the traffic conditions by assuming

that the density of mobile users in a particular area is

a reflection of the traffic conditions in that area.

Such systems require installation of micro towers

233

Jindal R. and Gupta A. (2008).

GENERATING TRAFFIC INFORMATION THROUGH MOBILE MESSAGING.

In Proceedings of the International Conference on Wireless Information Networks and Systems, pages 233-236

DOI: 10.5220/0002023902330236

 SciTePress

over particular roads and crossings, measuring the

number of mobile phone users within a particular

tower’s range and then converting this information

to the vehicular traffic conditions in that area. Such

systems are not only dependent on statistical

assumptions but also require large investment in new

infrastructure that doesn’t make them readily

deployable.

3 PROPOSED TRAFFIC

INFORMATION SYSTEM -

OTIS

In the proposed system, a mobile phone user will be

able to send and receive traffic updates using SMS

(Harris 2003). Figure 1 illustrates the interaction of

OTIS with the mobile station (MS). The various

processes that will be involved in OTIS are

discussed below.

3.1 Receiving Traffic Information from

Mobile Users

The user can generate an SMS indicating the traffic

conditions on the road and send it to a predefined

number. Since the current technology cannot

ascertain the area information of a user sending an

SMS, the user will also have to message his location

along with the traffic update. The receiving short

message entity (SME), i.e. OTIS in this case, will

continuously store and process all incoming traffic

updates.

The form of the incoming traffic information

SMSs will determine the complexity of the

processing step in OTIS. Therefore, it is essential to

strike a balance between user’s convenience in

generating a traffic condition message and the

system’s ability to correctly interpret the message in

a timely manner. A plain English language message

will require natural language processing, filtering,

matching and estimation capabilities whereas a

keyword based message would be much simpler to

process. Although it seems that a natural language

message will be more convenient for a user it may

not always be so. For instance, if the user wishes to

inform to the system that traffic in area X is heavy

then a natural language form of the message would

be something like ‘heavy traffic in area X’.

However, if a keyword based format is used where

the keyword 3 indicates heavy traffic then the same

message can be written in the form – ‘3 area X’ –

which is clearly much easier and faster for the user

to type and at the same time makes the processing

easier and unambiguous. This paper suggests a part

keyword, part English format - <keyword>

<location> - as illustrated in the right column of the

table in figure 2.

3.2 Processing Traffic Information

This is the most crucial step of the system where all

the updates will come together and be consolidated

to generate meaningful and correct information.

Assuming the format of the incoming SMS as

proposed in this paper, the first keyword of the

incoming message could indicate the level of

congestion, while the following text could refer to

the location. A database of known locations and

roads could be created and the incoming messages

could be processed to ascertain which locations are

being referred to. A way to measure traffic condition

of a location could be to take sum of all the traffic

status keywords belonging to the same location.

Then, a higher sum would indicate more traffic

congestion and an appropriate update could be

generated and dispatched to the users. However, it is

important that only messages within a predefined

timeframe are considered for generating

information. For instance, if a 10 minute time

window is chosen then all updates received within

this time slot will affect the traffic status for that

period after which they will become void. This

means that although the traffic status of a location

would be continuously updated, only those SMSs

received within a particular time slot will be used for

the calculation. This would prevent old information

from affecting the current traffic status.

3.3 Propagating Updates to Mobile

Users

Many schemes may be employed to send traffic

updates to the mobile users. The users may choose

to receive updates at regular intervals or send

explicit requests to receive traffic updates. In the

latter case a user may send an SMS to the system

requesting a traffic update using the <keyword>

<location> format. Here the location is the place for

which the user seeks traffic information and the

keyword could be a predefined number, such as ‘0’,

to indicate to the system that the incoming message

requests a traffic update. Figure 3 summarizes the

processes of receiving, processing and propagating

information in the data flow diagram of the system.

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Figure 1: Interaction of OTIS, the network and the mobile

stations.

Figure 2: Traffic Status Keyword Scale.

4 IMPLEMENTATION

A working model of the proposed system was

implemented that demonstrates the feasibility of the

proposed traffic information system OTIS. A Java

language based SMS application was built that

interacted with an SMS gateway for sending and

receiving SMSs over an inbuilt GSM (Global

Systems for Mobile Communications) modem of a

mobile phone. A database of about thousand

locations in the city of Delhi, India was used for

matching the location of the incoming messages.

The processing logic used in the implementation was

based on the discussions made in section 3.

Keyword ‘0’ indicated that the incoming message

was a request-message and required a traffic update

from the system while a message with its keyword

lying in the set {1, 2, 3} indicated that it was

attempting to provide a traffic information to the

system.

The entire period of receiving user message and

sending back reply using SMS took about 10

seconds while the processing time alone took about

0.14 seconds. The implementation analysis showed

that majority of time taken during exchange of

information with the users was due to network

communication delays and for real world application

purposes faster means of exchanging SMSs need to

be used like directly connecting to the wireless

operator’s Short Message Service Center (SMSC).

5 PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS

5.1 Benefits of OTIS

Following points indicate why OTIS could be a

successful traffic information system:

1. The for the system – from the system aspect

of OTIS where users both send and receive

traffic updates lends credibility to it and

prevents misuse of it similar on the lines of

open access projects like Wikipedia

(http://www.wikipedia.org) and Open

Directory Project (http://www.dmoz.org).

2. Although traffic information may be

communicated using Internet and/or other

methods, it would have required high-end

handsets with General Packet Radio

Service / Wireless Access Protocol services

enabled. This would have severely

restricted the reach of this service. The

proposed model only requires the use of

SMS that is a standard part of all the

current and upcoming mobile standards like

Universal Mobile Telecommunications

System (UMTS) and GSM etc. and doesn’t

require any special handsets or

subscriptions bringing OTIS within the

reach of all mobile users.

3. These days short message service is being

used for all kinds of applications – from

movie ticketing to voting. For developing

countries like India, where traffic-

congestion is a major problem in the cities

low-cost SMS is a viable option for sending

and receiving traffic updates.

4. The system would be able to generate real-

time up-to-date information by allowing

mobile telephone users that are ‘on the

scene’ to generate and update traffic

information.

5. With mobile telecommunication growing at

fast pace and call tariffs continuously

reducing, more and more people are using

cellular communication and becoming

more mobile.

6. OTIS is instantaneously deployable without

requiring any major changes to hardware or

software.

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235

5.2 Discussion on Possible Issues in

OTIS

Following points discuss solution of some problems

that may arise in OTIS.

1. Since OTIS will use messaging to both

propagate and receive traffic updates, the

short message center may be considered to

be a bottleneck. However, this can be easily

averted by using distributed network

architectures and appropriate SMSC

hardware like CMG HP SMSC that

supports 2500 messages/sec (Zanen n.d.).

2. Use of mobile phones for messaging while

driving could be a distraction but most

messaging is likely to be done during traffic

jams where the vehicles are intermittently

moving and stopping. Furthermore, in cases

where other passengers may be

accompanying the driver, the messages can

be sent and received by them. Besides

messaging may be done any time even

when not driving. For instance, one could

inquire the traffic status of a location before

setting on the journey or make traffic

updates as a by-stander.

3. Another concern is to maintain the

correctness and validity of the traffic

information being sent to the users. By

using improved algorithms for matching

locations the effectiveness of the systems

can be increased. Moreover, by constantly

adding and updating locations in the

database the updates can be made more

successful and accurate.

6 CONCLUSIONS & FUTURE

SCOPE

This paper has proposed a novel means of

generating traffic information using mobile phone

technology. The proposed system – OTIS – allows

mobile phone users to both send and receive the

traffic information of a particular area in the form of

short messages (SMSs). The current system suggests

the use of SMS for generating traffic information as

it requires no change in current network

infrastructure and makes this system instantaneously

deployable. Once the system is implemented other

methods of data collection and dissemination may be

added to further improve the system. For instance,

cell broadcasting (CBS) (Harris 2003) may also be

used for disseminating traffic updates to the mobile

users. By allowing people who are moving through a

particular road or a location to generate its traffic

status rather than relying on other agencies like radio

broadcasts and other vehicular probes, real time up-

to-date information can be collected using this

system.

REFERENCES

Balke W.T., Kießling W., Unbehend C., 2002. A

Situation-aware Mobile Traffic Information System,

Proceedings of the 36th Hawaii International

Conference on System Sciences (HICSS’03)

Harris I., 2003, 3rd Generation Partnership Project,

Technical realization of Cell Broadcast Service (CBS),

GPP TS 23.041 V7.0.0 (2003)

Harris I., 2003, 3rd Generation Partnership Project,

Technical realization of the Short Message Service

(SMS), GPP TS 23.040 V8.1.0 (2003)

Wischhof L., Ebner A., Rohling H., Lott M. and Halfmann

R., 2003. SOTIS – A Self-Organizing Traffic

Information System, Vehicular Technology

Conference, 2003, The 57

IEEE Semiannual Volume

4, Issue, 22-25 April 2003 Page(s): 2442 - 2446 vol.4

Zanen S., n.d., Wireless Developer Network - SMS: Can

Networks Handle the Explosive Growth?,

http://www.wirelessdevnet.com/channels/sms/features

/smsnetworks.html

Figure 3: Data Flow Diagram of OTIS.

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