SVPS: Cloud-based smart vehicle parking system over ubiquitous VANETs

Abstract

Due to immense urbanization and growing number of vehicles, parking space is scarce and expensive in metropolitan cities. Drivers spend more time in searching and wandering for vacant parking facilities which causes traffic congestion, additional fuel consumption, and pollution. To provide more robust parking solutions, we propose a novel cloud-based smart vehicle parking system (SVPS) over ubiquitous VANETs. The proposed SVPS architecture offers a unique algorithm that provides an appropriate vacant parking space information along with booking and recommendation options to facilitate vehicles in an effective, real-time and precise manner. For the best utilization of existing parking facilities, numerous factors such as drive time, distance to the recommended parking facility, parking fee, walking distance from the parking facility to destination and traffic congestion, are deliberated in the proposed SVPS algorithm. Moreover, Parking Side Units (PSUs) are installed along every parking facility for coordinated management between cloud infrastructure and Road Side Units (RSUs). Extensive simulations results reveal that the proposed cloud-based SVPS reduces the fuel consumption and hazard emissions by enabling the best utilization of existing parking resources. Furthermore, the proposed approach addresses the traffic congestion caused by both vehicles searching for parking spaces and congestion caused by traffic routing. © 2018 Elsevier B.V.