Motorway traffic parameter estimation from mobile phone counts

In this paper a new method for real time estimation of vehicular flows and densities on motorways is proposed. This method is based on fusing traffic counts with mobile phone counts. The procedure used for the estimation of traffic flow parameters is based on the hypothesis that “instrumented” vehicles can be counted on specific motorway sections and traffic flow can be measured on entrance and exit ramps. The motorway is subdivided into cells, assuming that mobile phones entering and exiting every cell can be counted during the observation period. An estimate of “instrumented” vehicle concentration is obtained and propagated on the network in time and space. This allows one to estimate traffic flow parameters by sampling “instrumented” traffic flow parameters using a “concentration” (the ratio of the densities of instrumented vehicles to the density of overall traffic) propagation mechanism.