Intelligent Traffic Control System: Towards

Smart City

Arjun Dutta Abhisikta Chakraborty Amit Kumar Anirup Roy

Department of Computer
Science and Engineering
Institute of Engineering and
Management, Kolkata,India
arjuncode47@gmail.com
Department of Computer
Science and Engineering
Institute of Engineering and
Management, Kolkata,India
acabhisikta@gmail.com
Department of Electronics and
Communication Engineering
Institute of Engineering and
Management, Kolkata,India
kkamit777@gmail.com
Department of ComputerScience
and Engineering
Institute of Engineering and
Management,Kolkata,India
anirup.roy42@gmail.com

Swarnabha Roy
Department of Computer
Science and Engineering
Institute of Engineering and
Management,Kolkata,India
swarnabha4399@gmail.com
Debarpita Chakraborty
Department of Computer
Science and Engineering
Institute of Engineering and
Management,Kolkata,India
debarpitachakraborty7@gmail.co
m
Prof. Himadri Nath Saha Aadriza Sen Sharma
Department of Computer Science Department of Computer
and Engineering Science and Engineering
Surendranath Evening College,
Institute of Engineering and
Kolkata,India Management,Kolkata,India
contactathimadri@gmail.com
aadrizasensharma19@gmail.
com

Meghma Mullick Swarnali Santra Sudeepta Saha

Department of Computer Department of Computer Department of Computer
Scienceand Engineering Science and Engineering Science and Engineering
Institute of Engineering and Institute of Engineering and Institute of Engineering and
Management,Kolkata,India Management, Kolkata,India Management,Kolkata,India
meghma11nov@gmail.com swarnali.santra27@gmail.com sudeeptasaha11@gmail.com

Abstract-India is the second most populated country in the
world at an estimated growth of 1.37 billion.As a result the
traffic problems have become more prevalent and efficient
traffic control and the management has become an absolute and
urgent requisite. Hence, it is the need of the hour to have well
maintained traffic control system particularly in busy traffic
hours. In this paper, we proposed a traffic control system for
the maintenance of congestion, clearance of emergency-vehicles
like ambulance, fire-brigades, and detection of stolen
vehicle.The proposed system was based upon three major
conditions: control of heavy traffic flow, make a separate route
for emergency vehicles like ambulances, fire brigade, VIP
vehicles etc and finally detection of stolen vehicles through
RFID tags.This paper aims to reduce and solve most problems
related to traffic congestion by using an IoT based setup. The
system comprises of four RF module setups which are
controlled by a hub RF module setup wirelessly. This paper
provides a detailed explanation with the proposed model which
was aimed to reduce the manpower as well as cost of traffic
control with an efficient maintenance system. The proposed
work will enhance the safe flow of traffic and reduces chaos in
traffic management.
Keywords-congestion,emergency-vehicles,traffic,IoT,RF-
module,RFID
I. INTRODUCTION
With the vast growth of industrialisation and urban
population there has been a tremendous increase in the
traffic. Increase of vehicles, violation and breaking of traffic
rules are the major reasons of traffic jam. For this people

978-1-7281-2530-5/19/$31.00 ©2019 IEEE

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have to wait for hours in their cars in the scorching heat
which in turn results in a terrible loss of money and fuel.
Because the number of vehicles has increased on road, traffic
jams are happening in the big cities and towns mostly in
morning especially during the office hours. At this point
people have to wait at certain junctions, even if there is no
traffic till the traffic light remains red. After the traffic light
turns green only then can people move from one place to
another. As is understandable a lot time gets wasted in this
process. Hence a more dynamic approach is needed. One
effective solution to this problem would be to implement
different time delay settings for red, green and yellow at
different junctions and locations. The delay for junctions
having high volume of traffic should be set longer than the
delay for junctions having low traffic volume.It has been
noticed that emergency vehicles such as ambulance, fire
brigade, etc. get stuck in the traffic jam for hours. The
emergency vehicles need to wait for the traffic light to be
green. But that also need to be made more dynamic which is
exactly what this project aims to achieve.This paper is
organized as follows: The next section tells us about the
related works. Section III describes the microcontroller
overview. Section IV illustrates about the materials used.
Section V & VI tells us about the algorithm used and the
proposed system. The last section consists of a conclusion,
future works and the references.
II. LITERARY REVIEW
The number of vehicles are increasing day by day. As a result
of that, problems related to traffic management has increased
rapidly in the last few years and the traffic light controllers in
use at present have limitations because they use the same out-
dated hardware.To make a more efficient traffic light
controller Vidya Bhilawade,L.K.Ragha came up with a
technique that uses sensors along with embedded technology.
Comparing with past techniques this technique was
considered to be more sophisticated one[1].Bilal Ghazal puts
a light on the fact about the disparity in the flow of cars with
time, the chances of accidents, the passage of emergency and
high priority vehicles, and the pedestrian crossing are not
addressed properly in the existing traffic system.He proposed
a system based on PIC microcontroller that evaluates the
traffic density using IR sensor and accomplishes dynamic
timing slots with different levels[2].Liang-Tay Lin designed
a new traffic control system framework for Taiwan, which
they called the Mobile Traffic Control System(MITCS).The
system combines micro-mechanical and electrical
technologies along with embedded system, wireless
transmission, image processing and solar power module.
Their proposed system comprised of a Virtual Traffic
Police(VTP), a Status Monitor Agent(SMA) and a Traffic
Control Integrated Module(TICM)[3].
In their work, Pyinti Raju focussed on ambulances, priority
vehicles(like VIP cars ,police jeep) and over-all traffic
density control. RFID signals and sensors were used such
that the traffic signal in the lane in which the ambulance is
green, such that it faces no hindrance in its path. For the
priority vehicles, IR transmitter and receiver were used to
make their lane green similarly as the Ambulance, but giving
an Ambulance higher priority. Apart from this, they also
concentrated on traffic density control by using IR
transmitter and receivers to ensure that if a lane has more
traffic, the signal in that lane remains green for a longer
time[4].In many developing regions, we may find small
critical areas which are common hot-spot for frequent
congestion, poor traffic management.A simple image-
processing technique was presented by Vipin Jain for
detecting congestion levels in road traffic by using CCTV
camera image feeds.The algorithm was designed based on
data from noisy traffic feeds from many traffic signals in
Kenya and Brazil[5].
Rijurekha Sen proposed techniques involved video
processing of traffic, resulted in about 11% average error for
density and speed compared to the ground truth values
observed manually. Though they started with intuitive and
straight-forward image processing tools, the heterogeneous
and chaotic traffic in Bangalore gave rise to a lot of issues
that had not previously been considered, and as a result of
this the techniques that were used did not prove fruitful. They
also measured the fundamental curves of transportation
engineering, such as speed vs. density and flow vs. speed
curves[6].Vahedha and B.Naga Jyothi worked on designing
an intelligent traffic controlling system. The aim of their
work was to reduce traffic jams particularly when emergency
vehicles approach towards the traffic signals and roadway
junctions. The basic idea of their proposal work was the use
of a Radio Frequency Identification(RFID) tag which would
be provided to each vehicle.Their proposal was made keeping
in mind a multi road traffic junction point [7].Rise of IT
industry and other PSU’s gives a rapid growth of population
over a particular city or state which contributes nearly 4.1
million vehicle owners where annual growth rate of vehicles
in Bangalore lies between 6 to 10%.In the year,2012 the
growth rate was 41 lakhs per annum[9].
Fig.1:shows the busy traffic in the Kolkata city(N-W)corridor
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The above Fig. 1 puts a light in the rapid growth of vehicles
and traditional use of traffic system in Kolkata region in the
N-W corridor.
as the main corridor linking the north and south street from
shyambazar to tollygaunje.
Whereas A.J.C Bose Road links the east-west corridor along
the east edge of the city.Most of the important roads as
mentioned in the table are four-lane roads.
The mobility index as referred in the table tells about the
measure of congestion from 7am till 11am and from 5pm till
9pm as the roads seems very busy in the office hours,
overloaded traffic and pedastrians.

III. MICROCONTROLLER OVERVEIW

Arduino is an open-source hardware development board

Fig. 2:shows Traffic congestion near Kolkata city
The above Fig.2 shows the plight of the people due to Traffic
congestion in the metropolitan city of Kolkata.This figure
also highlights the high demand of movability coupled with
very low road space which results in high cogestion on the
roads of Kolkata.
which depends on a microcontroller that makes installed
programming a lot simpler than conventional strategies.
Arduino contain various parts and interfaces together on a
solitary circuit board. The other reason for choosing Arduino
are mentioned below.
i. Economical
Arduino is easily available in market and
hence useful and cheap.

In a similar study,Varmora showed that due to change in the

carriage-way space and composition of vehicles, the traffic in ii. Multi platform software & Simple
the city of Ahmadabad suffers a high rate of congestion along Arduino software can run in Windows, Linux,
the length of the road[11]. Macintosh OSX,hence more friendly compared
to other devices.
Coding in this software is much alike C/C++
Table 1:shows congestion in important roads near hence much easier to understand.
Kolkata city[10]

Name of Corridor Desired Mobility iii. Open source and extensible hardware
road speed(A) speed(M) index(I=A/M) Arduino is reliance on Atmel’s Atmega8 and
Atmega168 microcontrollers. The designs for
C.R Avenue 25 30 0.17 the modules are flowed under a Creative
Commons permit, so experienced circuit
architects can make their own specific
M.G Road 9 30 0.7 elucidation of the module, take a shot at it,
broadening and improving it.
Lenin Sarani 20 30 0.4

A.J.C road 18 30 0.4

J.L.N road 25 30 0.17

R.G kar road 18 30 0.4

From the Table 1 we get to know about the following data. Fig. 3 [ 8 ]
The mentioned following roads gives rise to heavy traffic in
the metropolitan city of Kolkata.C.R avenue,J.L.N road plays Fig. 3 [ 8 ] :shows arduino-uno specification

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 V.CONTROL ALGORITHM
Table 2 :M icrocontroller Specification
Control variable
Microcontroller ATmega 328 Specifications
Operating Voltage(OV) 5V green–variable which accepts the Boolean value, responsible
Input voltage preferred 7 to 12 V for the glow of green light.
Input voltage range 6 to 20 V finalSequence[i][j]-It is used to test for different delay
I/O digital pins 14 (6 provides lengths upon given array range of values.
greenDelay- responsible for the time frame for the glow of
PWM output)
the led.
Analog Input Pins 6
normalDelay- responsible for the normal glow condition of
DC Current per I/O Pin 40 Ma the led.
DC Current for 3.3V Pin 50 Ma light- responsible for the change in the glow of light from red
Flash Memory (ATmega328) 32 KB (of which to green & green to amber.
0.5 KB used by elementCount- determines the final value till which the for-
boot loader) loop runs.
SRAM (ATmega328) 2 KB unit- compares the present value with the past value,upon
EEPROM (ATmega328) 1 KB which the red,green or amber led glows.
Clock Speed 16 MHz
Length 68.6 mm Function List
Width 53.4 mm
Weight 25 g bool -It is a booleanexpression which works upon true or
false.
for- used for execution of the loop.
delay -This function is used to increase or decrease timer
IV. MAJOR COMPONENT DESCRIPTION clock.
digitalWrite-writes the value from a specified digital pin.
INFO[1][i]- functions to display according to the pattern
In this section, a brief elucidation of the main sensing
given in the array.
components used is discussed.

A. GSM SIM800A board for (int j =1; j<= elementCount; j++)

SIM800 is a compact Quad band GSM/GPRS solution in if
SMT type which can be embedded in customer’s application bool green = false;
tool. It is used to send SMS, data or information with low for (int i = 1; i<= 4; i++)
power consumption to the receiving unit.
if (finalSequence[i][j] == 3)
B. RF Module then
green = true;
RF is a trans-receiver which supports radio frequency
end if
communication at 2.4 GHz frequency. It consists of Atmega
328 micro-controller and a unique identification code. end if
RF module supports unidirectional data flow. The receiver
pin CC2500 coordinates with the transmit pin of atmega328 if (green)
microcontroller. then
delay(greenDelay)
end if
C. LCD Liquid Crystal Display
else if
It is a flat panel display unit which is based on light delay(normalDelay)
modulating properties used to display instructions fed to the end if
microcontroller.
end if
if (light == 1 || light == 3)
then
for (int i=0; i<= 8; i += 2)

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 if (INFO[0][i] == unit)
then C. Stolen Vehicle Detection System
else if (light == 1) In our proposed system,we compare the unique
digitalWrite(INFO[1][i], LOW) RFID tag to the stolen RFIDs stored in the system.
digitalWrite(INFO[1][i + 1], HIGH) If similar data found after checking then the traffic
end if signal is shifted to red for the duration of 30 to
end if seconds.
else if
digitalWrite(INFO[1][i + 1], LOW)
digitalWrite(INFO[1][i], HIGH) D. Clearance of emergency vehicles
end if In this proposed system RFID transmitter is set in
emergency vehicle. When the vehicle reaches the
signal the receiver present in the traffic light poles
VI.PROPOSED SYSTEM receivers the data and automatically sets the green
signal to be on for 10 seconds for the passage of the
The implementation of proposed system is based upon three emergency vehicles safely. After the passage of the
major conditions, firstly control of heavy traffic flow, another vehicle the signal again shifts back to red for 30
is making a route of emergency vehicle like ambulance and seconds.
VIP vehicle and finally detecting crime or theft vehicle.

A. Automatic Signal Control System

In our proposed system we have used RFID tags &
RFID reader with the base frequency of 125 KHz.
When the vehicle enters in the range the receiver
will transmit an unique RFID to the reader. The
microcontroller present in the RFID reader will
count the tags reads in specified duration of time. In
the proposed system,if the counter exceeds 10 then
the duration for the glow of green light is further
shifted to 15 seconds. If the counter is between 5
and 9 then the green light duration is set to 10
seconds. If the counter value is below 5 then the
green light duration is set back to 5 seconds.The red
Fig.4
light duration will be for 5 seconds and orange light
duration will be for 2 seconds as referred in Fig.4. Fig.4:proposed model for Intelligent Traffic control system

B. Manual control
The automatic control system is however inefficient
when there is less traffic or during late night. In this
case we can implement the operation with button to
control the proposed system. Automated control
system also becomes inefficient when accidents or
construction occurs in one of the roads along the
four point road. The use of switch also adds a
positive impactspecially when there is a failure with
automated system.Switches can be used in the
proposed model of Fig 4 ,as referred in Fig.6.

Fig.6 contains 3 switches which controls the glow of

Fig.5
three led lights present in each setup of the proposed
model. Fig.5:RF setup connected with power outlet port of Laptop

Fig.5 tells us about a hub RF setup which is connected with a

Laptop for power source. This setup controls the other four

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RF setups wirelessly. The patterns in which the led glows in
other four setups is embedded here. In other words, this
setup acts as transmitting hub whereas other setup controllers
are receiver points.
Fig.6
Fig.6:Illustrates the use of switch when automatic system
fails or when manual system is needed to change the timer
clock of led display
VII. FUTURE WORKS
Some of the future works for this Traffic Control System
include the following:
A. Our proposed algorithm was tested real time in a single
location and during similar times of day. Further it is to be
tested in other circumstances as well to get a much more
efficient and generalized system of traffic control.
B. The current method demands the transfer of videos from
roads to labs for further processing. One possible alternative
to this could be to implement our algorithms on TI’s image
processing platforms or GPUs to reduce the video
communication costs.
C. An image/video processing based extension to our work
maybe that we can capture the number plates of cars. That
would not only help us keep track of the vehicles in case it is
stolen but also those that violate traffic rules very often, and
from that data we can classify reckless and responsible
drivers.
D. A special approach can be taken for traffic hot-spots by
developing a local de-congestion protocol that controls the
traffic near congested regions. It also prevents total
communication collapse that happens due to short bursts of
traffic.
VIII. CONCLUSION
In recent times, there has been a rapid increase in the number
of vehicles all over the world. There were approximately one
million licensed vehicles as per census last year.
As a result of this, traffic problems have increased in the last
few years and along with that, the present traffic light
controllers have limitations because they use the same old
traditional hardware. With this proposal, we present
techniques to control traffic and prevent accidents in unlaned
traffic system as prevalent in most developing countries.
In this paper we have proposed the use of sensors along with
embedded technologies mainly focusing on the IoT aspect of
it. The traffic on the road will decide the timings of the green
or red traffic signals. This traffic light controller system is
more flexible and efficient than the ones in existence
previously. Some additional features include the ability to let
emergency vehicles such as ambulance, fire brigade, etc pass
smoothly.
REFERENCES
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International Journal of Scientific and Research Publications, Volume 8,
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[2]Bilal Ghazal,KhaledKherfan, Smart Traffic Light Control System : 2016
Third International Conference on Electrical, Electronics, Computer
Engineeringand their Applications (EECEA),10.1109/EECEA.2016.7470780
[3]Liang-Tay Lin,Hung-Jen Huang,Jim-Min Lin,Fongray-Frank, A New
Intelligent Traffic Control System for Taiwan :2009 9th International
ConferenceonIntelligentTransportSystemsTelecommunications,(ITST),10.11
09/ITST.2009.5399369
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