Performance Evaluation of Urban Arterial Network Using Wi-Fi Sensors Under Heterogeneous Traffic Conditions

Traffic data collection is one of the major issue faced by the researches as well as government authorities for the study of traffic movement behaviour. Conventional methods of data collection under mixed traffic condition do not yield promising results and cannot be completely relied upon. Thus, this study aims to assess the potential use of Wi-Fi based sensors for the performance evaluation of arterial closed network and formation of O-D matrix in Centre Business District area of Surat city with help of Wi-Fi based data collection technique. This paper expounds the essentiality for the use of Wi-Fi data as an outlining parameter in the performance evaluation of the study network, which is unlike the conventional examinations that signifies the use of Bluetooth observations for evaluating the network operation based on the travel time reliability measures. The data provides exceptional results than the other hackneyed techniques, which results in less sample size and accuracy. Further, the network development was executed with the deployment of four sensors at critical confluences. This was useful for scrutinizing the traffic movements along the arterial network.
The sensors used here work on the principle of recurring detections of MAC ids for the devices along with their analogous time stamps for the duration in which they remain within the detection range. Thus, re-identification of the same moving vehicle along various network points will help to determine the travel time where the difference in the time stamps of certain MAC ids moving among several junction points were exercised for the determination of travel time and development of O-D matrix along all possible routes. The Wi-Fi data obtained from the sensors in Surat city network corresponds to the critical routes for various hours of the day. This leads to development of primary and secondary matrix comprising of total and cut through traffic, which are useful for multiple aspects. The trial results show the successful penetration (unique detections to vehicles) ratio ranging from 20-to30percentage after significant results from various statistical analysis test as well as considerations from literature studies. The ultimate outcomes will justify the substantiation of results obtained from sensors along with assessments with other performance-measuring device.