DEVELOPMENT OF FRAMEWORK FOR NETWORKING AND SYNCHRONIZATION OF TRAFFIC SIGNAL AT ROAD INTERSECTIONS

Abstract

Intelligent transportation systems (ITS) intends to deliver novel services linked to various railways, road and off-road modes of transport. ITS improves real-time decision making operations of the entire transport system. It also addresses the complex issue of effective control and management of traffic at road junctions, signalling and train control systems. Numerous traffic light management systems have been developed to improve the real-time traffic flow at junctions, but none of them have resulted in real-time traffic synchronization or networking of the traffic signals of a region. The complicated architecture of traffic systems does not coordinate/link the timings of traffic signals with the average daily road traffic, which leads to congestion at the intersections. Also, the current systems used for signalling, monitoring and train control systems have various drawbacks related to fault of traction power supply system, train delays, security etc. Thus, there is a need of an adaptive method which resolves the issues of real time traffic signal control and metro railways infrastructure. The objective of this thesis is to suggest robust and effective frameworks to control congestion at intersections and to improve the functionality, efficiency and usefulness of signalling and train control systems. The contributions presented in this thesis are outlined below: • We propose an intelligent and secure framework for networking and synchronization of traffic signals using traffic information extracted from sensors using Programmable Logic Controller (PLC). The proposed method focuses on calculating the timings of traffic lights on the basis of current lane densities and the densities of peer junctions at various levels using Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) SCADA for the smooth flow of traffic at intersections and for reducing the congestion at neighboring intersections. • We propose a solution for facilitation and prioritization of emergency vehicle transit in metropolitan environments. In this technique, sensors are used ix along with PLCs to learn and extract traffic information from all the directions at a road intersection. The proposed method is efficient in giving preference to the road with presence of high priority vehicles like VIP, police, ambulance and fire brigade etc. so that they can cross an intersection at their maximum speed. • We propose the development of real time monitoring and control strategies for metro railways infrastructure. A simulated prototype of an automated metro train system operator has been developed that uses PLC and SCADA for the real time signalling, monitoring and control of the metro railways infrastructure. Experimental analysis has been done extensively to prove the efficacy of the developed solutions.