Using Bluetooth and sensor networks for intelligent transportation systems

Safety of road travel can be increased if vehicles can be made to form groups for communicating data among themselves. The Bluetooth protocol can be used for inter-vehicle communication among vehicles equipped with Bluetooth devices. This paper presents a novel approach to increase the safety of road travel using the concepts of wireless sensor networks and the Bluetooth protocol. We discuss how vehicles can form mobile ad-hoc networks and exchange data sensed by the on-board sensors. The fusion of these data could give a better understanding of the surrounding traffic conditions. The feasibility of using Bluetooth for data exchange among vehicles is evaluated. Coverage area and probability of detection plots for isotropic and non-isotropic sensors are analyzed to study their use to avoid potential dangerous situations in traffic. As the simulation results show, Bluetooth and sensor networks can be used collaboratively to increase the safety of road travel.