Pishro-Nik receives $400k CAREER grant from NSF

The National Science Foundation has awarded $400,000 to Hossein Pishro-Nik, assistant professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, to create the theoretical and mathematical framework for a wireless communication network to help prevent automobile crashes and traffic snarls.

The grant is from NSF’s prestigious Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) program

Cars equipped with wireless communication devices would communicate with each other to prevent accidents and deliver traffic congestion reports to drivers, for example.

Pishro-Nik says many countries plan to deploy vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) to improve transportation safety and efficiency, but there is at present no rigorous mathematical framework to support them. Pishro-Nik’s NSF research aims to develop a solid theoretical framework for wireless-enabled transportation systems by combining communication theory and traffic flow theory. According to Pishro-Nik, the average delay due to congestion has tripled in the past 30 years, wasting an average 40 percent of travel time and 2.3 billion gallons of fuel per year. Worse, traffic accidents are the most common cause of death among 15-to-34-year-olds.

In one scenario the engineers have modeled, one of two vehicles approaching an intersection fails to stop at the signal. If the cars are communicating, the second driver could get a warning in time to brake and prevent a collision. With colleague Daiheng Ni of the Transportation Engineering Group, Pishro-Nik and student collaborators have built working prototypes of a communication system. One obstacle they face is that high-frequency signals cannot penetrate buildings, so multiple links would be needed at built-up corners. Also, emergency warnings must be delivered without delay. Finally, too many warnings could cause more problems than they solve, pointing to the need for message management.

With a VANET test bed plus a large set of real traffic data at the Transportation Engineering Group, Pishro-Nik and colleagues are able to validate various mathematical predictions. “We’re looking at the big picture, examining complex networks with thousands of vehicles and trying to answer the most important questions about what these communication networks can provide and what is the optimum design to provide it.”

April 1, 2009.

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