Applying the IoT platform and green wave theory to control intelligent traffic lights system for urban areas in Vietnam

Abstract

This paper proposes an intelligent system performing an application with assistance of an Internet of Things (IoT) platform to control a traffic lights system. In our proposed systems, the traffic lights can be remotely controlled through the Internet. Based on IoT platform, the traffic conditions at different intersections of roads are collected and the traffic lights are controlled in a central manner. For the software part, the algorithm is designed based on the green wave theory to maximize the green bandwidth of arterial roads while addressing a challenging issue: the rapid changes of parameters including cycle time, splits, offset, non-fixed vehicles' velocities and traffic flow along arterial roads. The issue typically happens at some areas where the transportation system is not well organized like in Vietnam. For the hardware part, PLC S7-1200 are placed at the intersections for two purposes: to control traffic lights and to collect the parameters and transmit to a host machine at the operation center. For the communication part, the TCP/IP protocol can be done using a Profinet port embedded in the PLC. Some graphical user interface captures are also presented to illustrate the operation of our proposed system.