DAR ES SALAAM INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY

DEPARTMENT OF ELECTRONICS AND TELECOMMUNICATION

ENGINEERING

REPORT TITLE: SYSTEM TO ESTIMATE TRAFFIC CONGESTION

CLASS: BENG21 ETE 2

MODULE NAME: INSTRUMENTATION AND MEASUREMENTS

MODULE CODE: ETU 07323

YEAR OF STUDY: 2022/2023

GROUP MEMBERS

S/N NAME REGISTRATION NUMBER

1 ADOLF A MKONDA 220647441699
2 FRANCIS ISAAC ALPHONCE 220647453793
3 ANNA KIMARO 220647465524
INTRODUCTION

To identify measuring instruments and testing equipment to be used in monitoring the traffic
congestion along a road segment, Study area being Morogoro road towards Bibi Titi
Mohamed Road.

OBJECTIVES

 To identify the parameters required for estimating the traffic congestion.

 To discuss the type of measuring instrument required to be used and testing points.
 To estimate the road congestion during peak-hours.

METHODOLOGY

A method to estimate traffic congestion proposed in this work is implemented with basic
opensource microcontroller, ultrasonic sensor, and data communication channel that transmit
the state of traffic to a user. An Arduino UNO, Two HR-SR04 Ultrasonic Sensor, wireless
module and GSM module were primarily used for the acquisition and processing of the
signals captured for this experiment. The ultrasonic sensor is used as the signal acquisition
device and the Arduino UNO as the device for the processing of signals captured by the
ultrasonic device, Wireless module for transmitting data from point A of the road segment to
point B of the road segment and GSM module for sending the congestion status of the road to
a user.

The ultrasonic sensor is used to measure the distance between it and any object that is placed
in its line of sight. The object must be capable of reflecting audio signals for the estimation of
the distance. The sensor will be placed on the side of the road at starting of the segment and
at the end of the segment as stationary object with vehicles as moving objects. The sensor
will periodically measure the distance of vehicle that passes across the sensor, If the distance
measured is less the width of the road then will be considered as the present of a vehicle and
the period of occupancy considered as the nature of traffic flow on a segment of the road.

The signal acquisition stage is where the system captures the distance between the sensors
and vehicles. The Arduino will process the obtained data from the sensors to estimate the
traffic flow on the road segment and uses the GSM module to send an SMS to a user for road
congestion status.