Safe and Reliable Spatio-temporal Model for Roundabouts and Road Intersections using Vehicular Communication System

Road traffic accidents occurring at roundabouts and road intersections contribute to huge numbers of fatalities and injuries. Intelligent transportation systems (ITS) have been one of the most popular research themes, capable of reducing the number of road traffic accidents, and easing traffic congestion. Vehicle to vehicle (V2V) or vehicle to infrastructure (V2I) communication can assist vehicles in sharing security and safety related information such as real-time location, speed and route trajectories. Several innovative approaches for vehicles entering/exiting road intersections and roundabouts have been designed and managed based on the vehicular network and realtime location of vehicles obtained from the global positioning system (GPS). However, GPS observation is less reliable in urban or harsh environments. Therefore, for next generation ITS, reliability of GPS observation need to be concerned in order to increase the safety of road users, particularly when autonomous or semi-autonomous vehicles become operational which rely on positioning and timing for synchronisation between V2V and V2I. In this study, a novel spatio-temporal intersection management protocol is proposed, defining the confidence circle based reliability of GPS positioning which will be shared within a vehicular network. The simulation results show that proposed model for roundabouts and road intersections improves not only safety but also traffic efficiency.