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Published on March 25, 2008

Do not be surprised if soon, your mobile phone is able to do much more than just be a communication device. A research team from the National Electronics and Computer Technology Centre (Nectec) is working to turn your phone into a new "mobile probe" to help monitor the status of the traffic and report the information in real time.

The working principle behind the mobile probe's functionality is tracking the phone's movement from cell site to cell site to analyse traffic congestion.

Wasan Pattara-atikom, the project leader from Nectec's Intelligent Transportation System Programme's Network Technology Laboratory, said the team used cell-site identification to track the movement of the phone from one place to another to estimate and predict the traffic status.

The team has recently developed software which can be installed on the phone. The software records the position of the cell site and the cell's ID along with a time-stamp. This information is recorded every time the phone moves to another cell site.

 "With this system, we can analyse how long the phone took to move from one cell site to another,   and derive the traffic status from that information," Wasan said.

The team plans to try out the system in the next few months.

The pilot test is expected to have at least 200 volunteers. Volunteers need to install the software, which so far can run only on Symbian-based phones.

While travelling, the user needs to activate the software for the system to keep a record of the cell site and the time that the phone connects to the site tower. The information is then sent through the phone's General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) network to the centre automatically.

To collect more information, the centre plans to work with the public mass-transit system. Since the system is spread across Bangkok, it could help gather even more traffic information from pre-designated areas. The team plans to test the system using about 40 public buses.

Wasan said that after the information has been sent to the centre, the system will analyse it for possible traffic congestion in each of the areas. The analysis will be reported in terms of congestion levels with travelling time and traffic speeds to be added later.

To make the traffic report more accurate, at least three per cent of the vehicles in each area should be reporting data through the mobile probe, Wasan said.

Apart from collecting information and analysing the traffic status, the team will provide traffic information to motorists through a website as well as mobile-phone

networks.

"We have developed software which will let motorists access real-time traffic information from their mobile phones," he said.

Information will be available in the form of a simple map, which will show the route and congestion level in red, orange or green status, so that motorists can better plan their commute, he said.

Pongpen Sutharoj

The Nation