RSSI Based Real-time and Secure Parking Management System

Abstract

Vehicle parking has become a great concern that arise vital issues due to rapidly growing number of vehicles in the world. Numerous Wireless Sensor Network based Parking management systems have been introduced to overcome the issues related to vehicle parking. However, the current WSN based parking management systems consists of noticeable drawbacks including lack of scalability, lack of standard security mechanisms and high susceptibility to external interferences. The study adheres to Design Science Research methodology. The current WSN based parking management systems were critically analyzed to identify the defects and propose a solution. The study proposes and develops a novel Received Signal Strength Indicator based approach for detecting unoccupied parking slots in a parking lot. The proposed solution detects occupied parking slots and provide a real-time representation of available slots. It employs a lightweight and scalable communication protocol, that is Message Queuing Telemetry Transport protocol. The RSSI based distance calculation algorithm proposed by Xiuyan Zhu's and non-Linear Least Square method is used to calculate the vehicle positions. The vehicle owners and administrative staff can connect to the Parking Management System via a mobile application to view information on parking slot availability, parking history and unauthorized parking. The artifacts were developed based on the proposed research design. The artifacts were evaluated based on accuracy, scalability, usability and security criteria. Based on the evaluation results, it was evident that the proposed solution is accurate, highly scalable, secure and user friendly. The proposed solution provides accurate results only on parking lots with flat surfaces. Further studies need to be conducted in order to extend the solution to parking lots with slanted surfaces.