Ultra low power RF Sensor Nodes (RFSN) based network for automation of outdoor parking systems

With the rapid proliferation of vehicle availability and usage in recent years, finding a vacant car parking space is becoming more and more difficult, resulting in a number of practical issues. Parking problems are becoming ubiquitous and ever growing at an alarming rate in every major city. A smart usage of wireless sensors networks for a continuous monitoring of the urban parking spaces will enable an efficient traffic management, mitigating congestions on city road and parking lots, as well as decreasing ecological impact of private transportation in crowded metropolises.

The automated parking system (SNOPS) will optimize the use of two state of the art technologies to ensure efficient sensing of the parking space status and transmission of this status using minimum energy. Sensing will be carried out by a Piezoelectric Sensor that will also use the deformation of the road to harvest energy and transform it into electrical power. This power will be used as energy for the communication system based on multi hop wireless sensor network that will transport the parking space status to the existing parking management system software. This system will then be capable of providing advanced features like remote parking monitoring, automated guidance and parking reservation mechanism.