Method for measuring road traffic load based on analyzing cellular communications
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Abstract
A system and method that continuously extracts traffic load and speed on roads within the coverage area of a cellular network. The data is extracted directly from communications in a cellular network without using any external sensors. The method enables correlating a car to a road it travels on and determining its speed by using only the partial data that arrives to the cellular switch. The method consists of the following stages: A learn phase, which can include a vehicle(s) with a location device (say GPS system) travels across the covered routes within a designated area and collects the cellular data (cell handover sequences and signal strength reports) and location data in parallel. The accumulated data is then analyzed and processed to create the reference database. An operational stage in which communications on the cellular network control channel are monitored continuously, and matched against the reference database in order to locate their route and speed. The route and speed data is used in order to create a traffic status map within the designated area and alarm in real time on traffic incidents. The data analysis and data base structure are done in a manner that will enable the following: Very fast, high reliability initial identification of the vehicle'"'"'s route in the operational stage, based on handovers'"'"' cell ID only. Very fast, high reliability follow up forward and backwards of the vehicle'"'"'s route in the operational stage. Real time, high reliability Incident detection.
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Citations
67 Claims
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1-40. -40. (canceled)
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41. A method for correlating a vehicle with the road on which it travels based on cellular communication, the method comprising the steps of:
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gathering sequence of events, such as call processing events or location related events from the cellular network, together with the location of the mobile unit at the timing of these events as a location reference and creating a learnt database; and
conducting analysis of new data, generated from communication with other mobile units that do not contain location reference in conjunction with the learnt database to match a sequence of reports to a specific route;
whereas the data is processed to overcome the problem of similar sequences for neighboring routes. - View Dependent Claims (42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 64, 65, 66, 67)
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55. The method for extracting traffic speed for a certain route section based on the rate of handovers (cell switching) for that route section where as the traffic speed extraction comprises of:
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a calibration stage in which traffic speed of a route section is correlated with the rate of handovers for this route section on the same time. comparing the measured Handovers rate with the rate of handovers in the calibration stage to extract the speed for the route section.
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63. A method for correlating a vehicle with the road it travels on based on cellular communication, the method comprising the steps of:
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collecting handover sequences statistics for the relevant area;
collecting traffic volume information for each route from external sources. Assigning sequences to routes according to volume comparison analysis; and
conducting analysis of new handover sequences from new drives in conjunction with the learnt database to identify a route at certain time points during cellular phone calls.
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Specification