A MEMS Acceleration Sensor for Traffic Condition Detection

Abstract:
The determination of traffic conditions has become of crucial importance in cities, in which the rapidly increase of vehicles overpasses the infrastructure available. This makes it necessary to improve the efficiency of the current roads by sensing the traffic in them to know the volume, average speed, and types of vehicles that are passing. The obtained data can be studied to make a better vehicular traffic distribution, where the users can arrive faster to their destinations reducing the amount of pollutant gases to the atmosphere as well as accidents. This paper presents a study of the most common used traffic detection systems and compares them with an own developed MEMS accelerometer with a sensitivity of 1 mG, able to measure the vibrational out-of-plane accelerations of the asphalt surface. Index Terms — Traffic detection, vehicles, in-road detectors, over-road detectors, MEMS, accelerometer, sensor, asphalt, highway, vibration.