Reliable Traffic Monitoring Using Low-Cost Doppler Radar Units

Road traffic monitoring typically involves the counting and recording of vehicles on public roads over extended periods. The data gathered from such monitoring provides useful information to municipal authorities in urban areas. This paper presents a low-cost, widely deployable sensing subsystem based on Continuous Wave Doppler radar. The proposed system can perform vehicle detection and speed estimation with a total cost of less than 100 USD. The sensing system (including the hardware subsystem and the algorithms) is designed to be placed on the side of the road, allowing for easy deployment and serviceability.