Road traffic estimation from location tracking data in the mobile cellular network

Mobile communications are widespread in a large part of industrialized countries and cellular networks, by which mobile radio-communications are supported, can give directly or potentially a huge amount of frequently updated information on the position of their users. This information can be used to estimate on-line the traffic conditions of important roads and highways, by exploiting the presence of mobile phones on-board a good deal of vehicles. This paper analyzes this possibility and proposes a mechanism, which gives the capability to estimate traffic parameters in the cells along a road with a partial presence of active cellular phones in the vehicles. The proposal has been tested by using an integrated vehicle and communication traffic simulator and different situations have been verified. The results are presented in the paper and they show a good level of accuracy and a satisfactory behavior of the proposed technique.