A cloud computing based intelligent traffic control system for vehicular networks

The number of vehicles on the road increases permanently causing more and more traffic jam and congestion which results in a lot of delay in arriving at destination. Intelligent transport systems (ITS) have merged as an efficient way to overcome particularly this kind of problem in vehicular networks (VANETs) and improve performance of transportation systems. One of the solutions is to put intelligent traffic lights at each intersection of high vehicle density. In this paper, we propose a cloud computing based intelligent traffic light control algorithm, called CITLA. This algorithm aims to schedule the traffic by switching the phases of the traffic lights dynamically according to the state of the road in real time based on the conventional cloud. The Cloud has a global view on the road network since it is responsible for collecting road information via the RSUs placed on each street corner. It commutes thereafter, based on the information collected, the density of each road so as to minimize the waiting time and congestion on the roads. The results of these calculations are transmitted in real time to the RSUs which are responsible for controlling the traffic lights by changing the phases. The feasibility of CITLA was demonstrated through simulations using the discrete event simulator OMNeT++ with Simulation of Urban Mobility (SUMO).