An IoT-based E-Parking System for Smart Cities

Pampa Sadhukhan
School of Mobile Computing & Communication
Jadavpur University
Kolkata, India - 700032
Email: [email protected]

Abstract—The increasing number of vehicles on the road along component called parking meter (PM) to address the following
with the mismanagement of available parking space leads to the issues.
parking related problems as well as increased traffic congestion in
• Real-time detection of improper parking
urban areas. Thus it is highly required to develop an automated 0
smart parking management system that would help the driver • Estimation of each vehicle s duration of parking lot usage
to find out some suitable parking space for his/her vehicle • Automatic collection of parking charges
very quickly. Although ample amount of research works on the The E-parking system proposed in this paper also provides
development of smart parking system exist in literature, but most
of them have not addressed the problem of real-time detection of
city-wide smart parking management solution via providing
improper parking and automatic collection of parking charges. parking facility availability information and parking lot reser-
In this paper, a prototype of internet-of-thing based E-parking vation system and it is named as parking meter (PM) based
system is proposed. The proposed E-parking system uses an E-parking (PM-EP).
integrated component called parking meter to address the above-
mentioned issues as well as to provide smart parking management II. R ELATED W ORK
throughout the city. Significant number of smart parking systems based on var-
Index Terms—smart parking system (SPS), parking lot, park-
ing meter (PM), internet-of-thing (IoT), E-parking. ious technologies like radio frequency identification (RFID),
wireless sensor network (WSN), Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, ZigBee etc.
I. I NTRODUCTION as well as agent based technologies and image processing
techniques have been proposed in the literature over the past
The huge proliferation in the number of vehicles on the
few years. Among these, a prototype of RFID-based smart
road along with mismanagement of the available parking space
sparking application that implements automated check-in and
has created parking related problems [1] as well as increased
check-out process of the vehicle from parking lot area by using
the traffic congestion in urban areas. Thus, it is required
RFID reader is presented in [3].
to develop an automated smart parking management system On the other hand, either the sensor node or WSNs have
[2] that would not only help a driver to locate a suitable been utilized to design several SPSs [4, 5, 6, 7, 8]. Among
parking space for his/her vehicle, but also it would reduce fuel these, a prototype of wireless sensor network based intelligent
consumption as well as air pollution. It has been found that a car parking system is presented in [4]. The proposed system
driver0 s search for a suitable parking facility takes almost 15 deploys low-cost sensor node at each parking lot within
minutes which increases the fuel consumption by the vehicle, some parking field to detect and monitor the status of each
traffic congestion and air pollution. parking lot. The detected status of various parking lots is
A significant amount of research works exist in the area periodically reported to a database via WSN gateway deployed
of design and development of smart parking system. Various at the parking field. Apart from monitoring the parking field,
features of smart parking system are listed below. the system proposed in [4] also provides other services like
• Inquiry on availability of parking space and reservation auto-toll, security management etc. Smart parking (SPARK)
of parking lot management system proposed in [6] also uses wireless sensor
• Real-time parking navigation and route guidance networks to perform various functionalities such as remote
• Vehicle occupancy detection and management of parking monitoring of parking area, reservation of parking lot, auto-
lots mated guidance to the parking space etc. The ultrasonic sensor
Most of the smart parking systems (SPS) proposed in node based SPS presented in [6] provides various functionality
literature over the past few years provides solution to the that include vacant sparking space detection, detection of im-
design of parking availability information system, parking proper parking, display of available parking spaces, payment
reservation system, occupancy detection and management of facilities etc. The SPS and car parking management system
parking lot, real-time navigation within the parking facility proposed in [7, 8] integrate WSNs and RFID technology.
etc. However, very few works have paid attention to the real- A vehicular ad hoc network (VANET) based smart parking
time detection of improper parking and automatic collection system for large parking area is proposed in [9] and this
of parking charges. Thus, this paper presents an internet-of- proposed parking scheme provides the drivers three important
thing (IoT) based E-parking system that employs an integrated services which are real-time parking navigation, intelligent

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anti-theft protection and dissemination of friendly parking
information. A reservation-based based SPS proposed in [10]
uses 802.15.4 low power wireless technology, Bluetooth and
Wi-Fi to enable the driver to find and reserve the vacant
parking spaces. An intelligent parking guidance and infor-
mation system that uses webcam to detect free parking slot
and provides SMS based reservation service to the driver is
proposed in [11]. Image processing technique is applied to
design some intelligent parking guidance system [12].
A smart and secure parking reservation system based on
GSM technology is proposed in [13]. An automated park-
ing system that uses Bluetooth technology as a means of
communication is proposed in [14]. The researchers in [15]
have presented an intelligent parking negotiation and guidance
system that uses mobile agents to make quick negotiation
between the vehicle and parking facilities and also to reduce
the amount of data to be transmitted over wireless networks.
The cloud-based platform has been used as a service to design
the SPS by the researchers in [16].
On the other hand, IoT based car parking management
system have been proposed [17, 18]. A location-centric IoT-
cloud based on-street car parking violation management sys-
tem has been proposed in [19]. The proposed parking violation Fig. 1. Network architecture of proposed E-parking system
management system assists the authoritative officers to locate
the vehicles improperly parked on street and also recommends
the officers some minimum cost route to reach those vehicles of the back end of the parking lot as shown in fig. 1. The
in order to reduce travel cost as well as average period of hardware configuration of the parking meter is shown in
parking violation detection. fig. 2. The PM consists of an ultrasonic sensor node used
An energy efficient automated car parking system that for detecting presence of vehicle within the parking lot, a
allocates some free parking slot nearest to entrance of the led for indicating the status of parking lot (reserved or not
parking area in order to save parking time as well as to reserved), microcontroller arduino MEGA 2560, an alarm IC
utilize parking space efficiently, has been proposed in [20]. module to create warning sound in case of improper parking,
The proposed system [20] saves energy by switching the a camera module for taking snapshot of the vehicle0 s license
lights on only when some car is in motion within the parking plate and IEEE 802.11 b/g/n compatible wireless module for
area. A smart car parking system based on efficient resource communicating with the local parking management server.
allocation, reservation and pricing is proposed in [21]. The The PM also includes two smaller solar cells to recharge the
researchers in [21] have attempted to provide guaranteed batteries as shown in fig. 2. A GSM module [22] is attached
parking reservations with lower cost and smaller searching with the local parking management server via some serial port
time for the drivers whereas higher revenues and resource for sending SMSs to the site officer as well as the vehicle0 s
utilization for the managers of the parking area. The proposed driver. The software architecture and functional specification
system utilizes mixed-integer linear programming to meet its of proposed e-parking system is presented below.
objective.
A. Software Architecture of Proposed PM-EP System
III. P ROPOSED PARKING M ETER (PM) BASED E-PARKING The proposed PM-EP presented in this paper consists of four
(PM-EP) different modules. These are parking lot monitoring system
The E-parking system proposed in this paper consists of (PLMS), local parking management system (LPMS), cen-
the following components. These are parking meter, a WLAN tral parking management system (CPMS) and lastly parking
or Wi-Fi integrated laptop/workstation called local parking availability information and reservation GUI. The functional
management server along with some Wi-Fi access points (APs) specification of each of these modules along with work flow
deployed within each parking facility and a central server for diagram on parking management done by this proposed system
providing parking availability information throughout the city is presented in this section.
and receiving parking lot reservation request from the driver of 1) Parking Lot Monitoring System (PLMS): This software
a vehicle. The network architecture of the proposed e-parking module is deployed on microcontroller arduino MEGA 2560.
system is shown in fig. 1. It can detect the presence or absence of a vehicle within the
According to the proposed PM-EP system, each parking parking lot based on time differences between the transmitted
lot is equipped with a PM which is positioned at the middle and received signal by the ultrasonic sensor node which emits

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 Fig. 2. Block diagram of Parking Meter (PM)

sound wave every 60 milliseconds [6]. Upon detecting some

vehicle0 s presence within the parking lot consecutively three
times, the occupancy of that parking lot by some vehicle is
confirmed. Then it takes a snapshot and sends the image to
the LPMS for further processing over the Wi-Fi connection as
depicted by the work flow diagram in fig. 3. If the vehicle
is improperly parked in which case LPMS fails to extract
license plate number from the image and then provides PLMS
a command to create warning sound through alarm IC for
improper parking of vehicle. When it detects the vehicle0 s exit
from the parking lot, it can calculate duration of parking lot0 s
occupancy by the vehicle and report it to LPMS as shown
by work flow diagram in fig. 3. Fig 3 also shows that LED
is turned on if PLMS receives reservation command for the
associated parking lot from LPMS.
2) Local Parking Management System (LPMS): This mod-
ule deployed onto the local parking management server avail- Fig. 3. Work flow diagram for Parking Lot Monitoring System
able within each parking facility area. It is responsible for
monitoring the whole parking facility area. It maintains a
record for each parking lot to keep track of its status which • On the other hand, if license plate number of some parked
can be empty, reserved or occupied. The work flow diagram vehicle is obtained successfully the associated parking
of LPMS is depicted in fig. 4. The various tasks accomplished lot0 s record is modified to change its state from 0 empty0
by this system is listed below. to 0 occupied0 and also to include vehicle0 s information.
• It attempts to determine the license plate number of When some vehicle exits from the parking lot, it receives
the parked vehicle by applying automatic license plate duration of occupancy of the parking lot by that vehicle
recognition (ALPR) algorithm [23] to process the image from PLMS. Then LPMS calculates the parking charges
received from PLMS. If ALPR fails to extract the license for that vehicle and sends SMS containing payment
plate number, it sends some SMS to the site officer via the option to the driver if payment is due.
GSM module attached to the LPMS for manual entry of • Whenever it receives reservation request for a parking
license plate number (LPN) into the system. ALPR fails if lot from central parking management server (CPMS),
the vehicle is incorrectly positioned or improperly parked at first it selects an empty parking lot if the parking
in which case site officer receives SMS for manual entry area is not full and then sends reservation command to
of LPN. Improper parking of the vehicle can be easily the corresponding PLMS. If reservation is confirmed by
detected if license plate is not visible within the image the PLMS, the record of corresponding parking lot is
in which case manual entry of LPN fails and then LPMS modified to make its status reserved and also include
sends improper parking signals to the PLMS for making information of reserving vehicle. After that LPMS sends
warning sound of improper parking as depicted by the reservation confirmation message along with number of
work flow diagram in fig. 3 and fig. 4. empty parking lots to the CPMS as depicted by the work

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 application along with payment options.
4) Parking Availability Information and Reservation GUI:
This is the client application deployed onto the driver0 s hand
held device. This client GUI enables the driver to obtain infor-
mation on availability of various parking facilities throughout
the city as well as to reserve a parking lot within the suitable
parking facility area over the Internet. If reservation is suc-
cessful, driver is asked for making payment based on duration
of reservation. After the payment has been made, the image
of the parking facility area displaying reserved parking slot is
delivered to the client application.

IV. C ONCLUDING R EMARKS

This paper presents the prototype of an E-parking system
that provides novel parking management solution for various
parking facility areas throughout the city. The proposed E-
parking system enables the drivers to obtain information on
availability of parking space and to reserve some parking
lot via a suitable GUI that means reservation based parking
management facility. This proposed system can easily detect
vehicle0 s improper parking within the parking lot and estimate
the duration of the parking lot0 s occupancy by some vehicle
by using an integrated component called parking meter that is
deployed at each parking lot. The proposed system also en-
ables the automatic collection of parking charges by providing
smart payment options to the driver.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The authors gratefully acknowledge the facilities and sup-
port provided by the Director and all other staff members
of the School of Mobile Computing and Communication,
Jadavpur University, a Centre of Excellence set up under
the 00 University with potential for Excellence00 Scheme of the
UGC.

Fig. 4. Work flow diagram for Local Parking Management System R EFERENCES
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