The Departure Time Planner (DTP) system helps to efficiently manage the commute plan by providing smart travel assistance, which suggests a departure from a given origin to a destination, given the desired arrival time at the destination. Towards this end, a DTP system is developed using a quasi-connected vehicle system where traffic data is collected from the sparse sensor infrastructure. The methods and algorithms were developed accounting for the non-lane-based movement of vehicles found in India.
This study develops a methodology to use the Wi-Fi sensors for traffic state characterization on highways. We examine the Received Signal Strength Indicator (RSSI) patterns and identify three distinct RSSI signature patterns. These patterns are used to develop methodologies to estimate a) if the queue is located upstream of the sensor, b) if the queue is located downstream of the sensor, c) if the traffic conditions are uniformly congested, or d) if the traffic conditions are uniformly congested. The estimates from the methodology are validated with empirical data that showed good concurrence with field conditions and the methods proposed in this paper have the potential to estimate the traffic conditions using sparse data from Wi-Fi sensors.