Feasibility of Congestion Detection and Queue Monitoring Using Bluetooth Technology

The use of Bluetooth technology for travel timeestimation has been emerging over the past few years. Severalstudies mainly focused on the capability of Bluetooth technologyfor travel time estimation; however, application of thistechnology for incident detection is not examined. This studyaims to investigate the feasibility of Bluetooth technology fordetecting non-recurring congestion. This case is studied for anincident happened in a stretch of E45 motorway in Aalborg,Denmark. The time duration that a Bluetooth-enabled device iswithin range of the sensors (Time-at-Sensors) along with thenumber of devices detected by the sensors are introduced asindicative parameters for congestion detection. Analyzing trendsof the overlaid profiles of the travel time, sample counts andTime-at-Sensors are used to identify congested situations.According to the results of the study, the introduced method iscapable to detect an abnormal traffic condition over roadnetworks.

Keywords:

Bluetooth Technology , Congestion Detection , Queue Propagation