Analysis of Vehicle Detection Rate for Bluetooth Traffic Sensors: A Case Study in Maryland and Delaware

Abstract

One of the most important traffic parameters in Intelligent Transportation Systems applications is travel time. Most recently Bluetooth sensors have been successfully used for estimating travel time on freeway segments. In this new technology travel time of individual vehicles is sampled at consecutive stations by recording the unique address of the electronic devices that are equipped with Bluetooth and are in discoverable mode. Similar to other travel time estimation methodologies, Bluetooth technology only captures the travel time of a fraction of vehicles in the traffic stream. To understand the average detection rate of Bluetooth sensors, an extensive data collection effort was conducted on several highways segments in the states of Maryland and Delaware. The traffic volume data reported by inductive loop and radar detectors have been used as the ground truth for actual vehicle count. Statistics on hourly detection rate for the case studies is presented.