By Kalwinder KaurSep 3 2013
Traffic congestion is one of the major problems in several developing countries due to the lack of an efficient traffic management system. Car parking is a key factor in addition to the congestion problem. Parking spaces are not maintained properly, and the end-users are not guided efficiently to park their vehicles. All such issues can be resolved with the help of parking motioning systems.
A parking sensor system monitors the storage availability in a parking facility and also notifies motorists about the parking availability.
Classification
Parking monitoring technologies can be grouped into different communication techniques. Each technique performs certain functionalities such as assigning parking lots to the users, updating the status of the parking lots, accounting and billing, and collection of payment.
However, the parking management technology is mainly classified into two networks, namely, wired and wireless networks. Most of the parking technologies now used fall under wireless technology.
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Wireless Sensors in Parking Systems
Parking systems having wireless sensor networks consist of different type of sensors that sense and gather information and transmit this information back to a base station or control center.
In a wireless parking sensor, the sensor nodes communicates the information about the position of each parking slot to a nearby node. The status is then transmitted to the next nearest node. This process continues until the data reaches the base station.
The status of the parking slot is indicated by a binary value, either 0 or 1. The value '1' denotes the car is been parked, and the value '0' denotes an empty slot. This information is then updated at the base station. End-users linked to a parking management system via the internet can then be updated about the status of the parking slot.
Zigbee communication is another important wireless communication technology that uses a higher level of communication protocol. This system operates based on IEEE specifications to allow data transmission over wide frequency ranges.
Radio frequency identification (RFID) technology employs radio frequency signals for transmitting data. RFID tags are fixed to objects and are automatically identified and detected.
Other wireless technologies include vision-based technology that employs cameras for image processing, in order to detect vacant slots within the parking zones.
Embedded internet access technology employs TCP/IP protocol with respect to a HTTP web server in order to perform various functionalities such as detection of parking space and enhancement of parking management in the traffic guidance system.
Applications
Parking monitoring technology can be used in parking systems installed in banks, hotels, shopping centers, airports and trade fairs.
References
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