The Benefits of a Cellular Enabled Smart Navigation in Urban Environments

Traffic efficiency in urban environments represents an important issue to be solved in a short time. In this paper we assume to exploit vehicles as sensors of traffic conditions that periodically transmit their information to a remote control center through the cellular network. After a proper data processing at the control center, updated traffic information are transmitted back to the interested vehicles still exploiting the cellular network. Specifically, dedicated unicast information to drivers suggest the best route to destination on the basis of the actual traffic conditions, so to provide an efficient smart navigation service. To evaluate the feasibility and the benefits of smart navigation in terms of traffic efficiency, we developed an integrated simulation platform that jointly takes into account vehicular traffic behavior in urban environment, data processing at the control center, and performance of the communication networks. Results are given in terms of saved travel time in urban scenarios under different settings.