|
Sensor networks are a natural candidate for car-park management systems, because they allow status to be monitored very accurately - for each parking space, if desired. Wireless sensor networks have the advantage that they can be deployed in existing car-parks without having to install new cabling for network and electricity to reach each sensing device. For this reason, wireless sensor networks also have use for on-street car-parking. In this application wireless sensor nodes are fitted in parking spaces in a car park. Once a car is detected by one of these sensors the information is sent wirelessly to a base-station. The data collected from the sensors is then used by the software to complete its functions, such as a graphical display of the free and occupied spaces.
Car Park Implementation
The nodes were deployed in a small but busy (high turnaround) shop carpark. Each node consisted of a battery, a sensor, a microcontroller and RF transceiver integrated on a modified version of the Tyndall mote. The electronics are housed in a disk shaped plastic casing which is RF transparent and strong enough to withstand being driven over. They are also weather proof. Due to the low profile of these sensors they are not a hazard to pedestrians. Figure 1 shows a node deployed in the carpark.
  
Figure 1 (a) Parking Sensing Node and (b) deployed in the car park
Figure 2 shows some of the results obtained from the trial. Sensors were only enabled between 08:00 and 23:00 each day as this corresponded to the opening hours of the carpark. The data is exported to a database and can be saved as pdf, excel or CVS forms. Stored data can be viewed in chart or table form, and also searched to display selected information about: a particular car park, section, row or bay; over periods of weeks, days, hours etc. Once the data is stored in the database there are hundreds of possible graphs and tables that could be used to represent that data. Also many other features can be built into the system easily. Some examples of these are
- High Occupancy Alerts Raises an alarm when the car park reaches a predefined occupancy
- Low Occupancy Alerts Raises an alarm when the car park empties to a predefined amount
- No Parking Zone Raises an alarm when a car is detected over a non-parking sensor
- Over Length of stay Raises an alarm when a car stays in a parking bay longer than a set amount of time
 
Figure 2: Sample results from data generated by nodes deployed in carpark
Contact : John Barton | john.barton@tyndall.ie | webpage
Links:
Relevant Projects:
- D-Systems – ‘Distributed Sensing Systems of Autonomous Micro Modules’
- Enterprise Ireland Funded Project – ATRP/02/227/a
- Project Partner: The Mobile & Internet Systems Laboratory at Department of Computer Science at University College Cork
Selected Publications
- John Barton, John Buckley ,Brendan O'Flynn, Jonathan Benson, Tony O'Donovan, Utz Roedig, Cormac Sreenan, “The D-Systems Project - Wireless Sensor Networks for Car Park Management”, Proc. 2007 IEEE 65th Vehicular Technology Conference, VTC2007, 23-25 April, 2007, Dublin, Ireland, pp 170-173
- John Barton, John Buckley ,Brendan O'Flynn, Jonathan Benson, Tony O'Donovan, Utz Roedig, Cormac Sreenan, “The D-Systems Project - Wireless Sensor Networks for Car Park Management”, 2nd Workshop on Wireless Sensor Networks Research in Ireland (WiSen 2007), June 11, 2007, Dublin, Ireland
- Jonathan Benson, Tony O'Donovan, Padraig O'Sullivan, Utz Roedig, Cormac Sreenan, John Barton, Aoife Murphy ,Brendan O'Flynn, "Car-Park Management using Wireless Sensor Networks”, Proc. First International Workshop on Practical Issues in Building Sensor Network Applications (SenseApp 2006), 14-17th November 2006,Tampa, Florida, USA, pp 588-596
|
