Wireless Mobile-Based Shopping Mall Car Parking ... - IEEE Xplore

2010 IEEE Asia-Pacific Services Computing Conference

Wireless Mobile-based Shopping Mall Car Parking System (WMCPS) Soh Chun Khang

Teoh Jie Hong

Tan Saw Chin

Shengqiong Wang

Multimedia University Multimedia University Multimedia University Faculty of Information and Jalan Multimedia 63100 Jalan Multimedia 63100 Jalan Multimedia 63100 Communication Technology Cyberjaya Selangor Cyberjaya Selangor Cyberjaya Selangor Swinburne University of Technology Malaysia Malaysia Malaysia Melbourne, Australia [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected]

green light when no occupied and red light when occupied to assist the driver to find parking space. This technology can provide comprehensive knowledge of the car park occupancy is thus available and assist driver in searching empty car parking space. Thus, it dramatically decrease the searching time need to find an empty car parking space. One shortcoming of vehicle sensor system is driver may not have luck to park their car near to the entrance. They may lead by the indicator to park their car far away and this does not benefit the driver anymore. Another possible situation is when there is only one available space; there will be more than one car drive toward it. Competing on an available car parking space is a waste of time and petrol. Furthermore, a lot of sensors have to be used inside a car park. This will be costly for a huge parking area and it also added up to the sensor maintenance cost.

Abstract- The existing car parking system in Malaysia usually required the car drivers to search an empty parking space in the car park without providing detail direction toward the available parking space. As the result, drivers may waste a lot of time and unnecessary energy while they turn around in the car park without direction and may cause car traffic congestion in parking space. This paper investigates the problems of car parking system in Malaysia and finally proposed a Wireless Mobile-based Car Parking System using low cost SMS service. The implementation of SMS service into the car parking system enable drivers to receive information regarding the availability of car parking spaces. In this system, the drivers can resend SMS to request for new assignment of car parking spaces if they fail to get the previous assigned destination. This paper demonstrates the design and implementation of Wireless Mobile-based Car Parking System (WMCPS) using SMS services by Breadth First Search (BFS) algorithm in finding the nearest parking space for drivers. The stimulation results reveal the intelligence of this system can efficiently allocate and utilize the car parking spaces inside the car park.

Some parking systems of foreign countries are providing online reservation service to customer which they can reserve a car parking space for a period of time like Munich Airport [7]. Anyhow, problem arise when they park over the limit of reserved time, their reserved parking space has been parked by others and etc. Some of the system provided the service that assigned parking space for driver via number printed on ticket, but the parking space may be far away from driver [8]. Sometimes it is inconvenient as the parking space may be taken over by those who are illegal parking or looking for available parking space too. One of the major problems faced in online reservation systems is wasting resources.Some drivers may reserve the parking spaces but didn’t come to park or miss the parking period. So, the system will hold the reserved parking spaces until the drivers come or didn’t come. This will waste the parking spaces because the system cannot utilize the available parking spaces all the time in the car park. Besides, most drivers do not have the necessary computer knowledge to make reservation via the web. Therefore the system is aiming at computer literate younger generation [9] [10].

I. INTRODUCTION It is very common to have huge crowds in shopping malls during peak hour (lunch time, dinner time, weekend) and sales periods. Discounts offered by merchants in shopping mall can attract a lot of customers to come. Most of the customer travels to the shopping mall with their own vehicles and this indirectly cause the problem of finding empty car parking space for the car drivers. Parking space is necessary for those who love to go for shopping and it is a must for shopping complex to provide a comfortable, secure and quality parking space for their customers. Nowadays, parking space need to be constructed in multi-level since the number of vehicles is increasing rapidly [1] [2]. As a consequence, drivers may face difficulties when they are required to seek in the lengthy multi-level parking space. It is very troublesome for a driver to seek an unknown available empty car parking space in a large car park. Nowadays, there are several car park guidance systems using different technologies to resolve the parking problem in car park. In Vehicle Navigation and Information System Conference 1995, Akihito used the vehicle sensors at each parking lot to track the exact locations of the empty parking spaces [3]. Wolff et al used magnetic field sensor and wiredbased concept to test on their simulation car park model [4]. In the year of 2008, Sunway Pyramid and The Mines shopping complexes also installed with this vehicle sensor and indicators above each parking space [5] [6]. It will show 978-0-7695-4305-5/10 $25.00 © 2010 IEEE DOI 10.1109/APSCC.2010.116

With the advancement of wireless technologies, wireless mobile-based methods have been employed in car parking system. Monash University’s Facilities & Services Division, Clayton campushas planned to develop a SMS based car parking system called Monash Car Park SMS Project (MCarPS) [11] [12]. This system provides users with information about the vacant car park areas and payment for the parking tickets. However, the drawback of the system is 573

it only allows user to check the availability of car parking spaces but does not provide any exact information about car parking spaces location such as parking lot ID. Consequently, this system didn’t implement by the Monash University yet because they didn’t recommend this system to pay or purchase their ticket fee. In our proposed mobile-based car parking system, the driver will be able to receive information about the available parking spaces inside the car park by using SMS service of their mobile phone. This proposed car parking system is designed to benefit the public and to increase the utilization of parking spaces in shopping complexes’ car park. This system has been named as Wireless Mobile-based Car Parking System (hereafter called as “WMCPS”). The assignment of the vacant parking space is based on the shortest path distance [13-16] by using BFS algorithm, taking into consideration the entrance to the car park used and the nearest entrance into the car park to make the drivers feel convenient. The benefit of using SMS is because it is low cost [17 – 20] and if their first assigned parking space is parked by others, they still can SMS again to get a new assigned parking space within a minute from the system [21] [22]. Hence, this feature can act as an emergency assistance and it can make sure the entire drivers in shopping mall car park have a place to park their car instead of driving around in car park for looking parking.

Figure 1: Overview of WMCPS

The SMS service part of WMCPS is developing based on GSM modem, SMS gateway and web server. OZEKI NG SMS Gateway (OZEKI) is the software tool that the system uses to support the services of send and receive SMS. OZEKI allow user to attach a mobile phone as GSM modem to the PC, and then control the GSM modem with AT command to send/receive SMS. [25] The interface of the system is designed using PHP script on the Apache web server. Apache send the HTTP requests and communicate directly with OZEKI. After OZEKI get the request, it will proceed with GSM modem. The main code that associated with OZEKI in PHP format to send and receive SMS is shown as follow:

The rest of the paper is organized as follows. Section 2 describes the design and implementation of the WMCPS. In Section 3, performance evaluation is conducted for the proposed system. Finally, Section 4 concludes this paper and suggests some future work.

Send SMS if ($sender!='') { #a # Save incoming messages # $fp = fopen("receivelog.txt","a"); fputs($fp,"Sender: $sender\nReceived Time: $time\nText: $messagedf\n\n"); fclose($fp); $responsetext = "Date: $date \nTime: $time2 \nYour assign parking lot ID is " . $grid[$y][$x]->label() . "."; include_once("sendsms.php"); ozekiSend($sender,$responsetext,$debug); } else { echo "The PHP script is ready for accepting messages"; }

II. DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION OF WMCPS Fig. 1 below shows the overview operation of the wireless mobile-based car parking system (WMCPS). First, the driver arrives at entrance and takes the parking ticket. Then, the driver may follow the assigned parking spaces (with parking lot ID) that printed on the ticket to park their vehicle. If there is available, means there is an empty parking space, driver may park their vehicle and proceed to the shopping mall. However, if the driver arrive at the assigned parking space and found out the parking space is already occupied, driver may send a SMS to WMCPS to get a new assigned parking spaces. Within a short period of time, driver may receive a SMS with a new parking lot ID. Then, driver may proceed to the new parking space to park their vehicle.

Receive SMS $sender = $_GET['sender']; $messagedf = $_GET['msgdata']; $time = $_GET['recvtime'];

Firstly, Ozeki will set the information for log in to the SMS gateway; there are user name, password and Ozeki API’s URL. Next, the “httpRequest($url)” function is to identify the URL ($url) send by function ozekiSend() is match the pattern as designed in Ozeki server. The main purpose to have ozekiSend() function is to generate a complete URL which contain the information to send, and then send then URL with call httpRequest function. Lastly, Ozeki retrieve the hand phone number and message by $_POST function and then send the information to ozekiSend function.

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For the receiving part, Ozeki is use $_GET function to get sender’s phone number ($sender) and text message ($message) from HTTP platform. If the sender variable contains sender’s phone number, the function will open a “txt” file ($fp) to store the text message as a record and reply a text message ($responsetext) to the sender as a response. In order to achieve drivers’ satisfaction, the WMCPS assigns the best car parking lot to the driver. This is done assuming drivers will prefer to park quickly and nearest to the entrance they took. Thus, allocation of vacant parking space is important. In this section, we present the car parking space assignment algorithm by always assign the car to the shortest path. The objective of the Breadth First Search (BFS) algorithm is to utilize the car parking spaces and also provide the best solution for driver by finding the minimum path’s distance from the entrance they took. [23][24]

Figure 3: Stimulation Model (Second Level)

Fig. 2 and Fig. 3 show the layout of the stimulation model used for WMCPS. There are two floors in the car park stimulation model with each contains over 110 parking spaces for each floor. Two entrances (Entrance A and Entrance B) and two exits (Exit A and Exit B) are located in the first floor. Cars can go to the upper floor via the ramp (labeled as To Upstair in the diagram below) and exit from upper floor via another ramp (labeled as From Upstair in the diagram below) located opposite.

“Check Record” is a web service that created to periodically records the SMS history into the database and allow user of application to trace back the record when they need it. The log file contain driver’s mobile number and time they send the message. The print screen of the web application is show in Fig. 4. From the figure, the front part (e.g. +6017xxxxxxx) is mobile phone number of driver that send SMS to the system to request parking space assignment; the following part is the time the system received those SMS.

Figure 4: Check record

Fig. 5 below shows an example of the stimulation model. From the diagram, there are several available parking spaces in first floor such as A73, A92, B43, B81 (those labels with green color are available, red are occupied), so the system no needs to search available parking at second floor. Then, system will find the shortest path from those available parking spaces and return the parking lot ID to user. A function panel is designed to show the detail information of stimulation result.

Figure 2: Stimulation Model (First Floor)

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Referring to the graph in Figure 7, the lowest estimate average period of time in system (APTS) was achieved after 10 minutes of running the system. The APTS obtained by slow arrival rate was 13.63 sec, followed by medium arrival rate with 14.21 sec and fast arrival rate with 17.84 sec. The APTS achieved by fast arrival rate was much far away from slow and medium arrival rate. This is due to the number of cars that assigned to the car park in the system for fast arrival rate was nearly double compared with slow and medium arrival rate. The range of the cars that assigned by the fast arrival rate was 84-93 cars, but there were only 23-25 cars and 37-40 cars for slow and medium arrival rate respectively. The availability of empty car parking spaces in first floor is still high for slow and medium rate. Therefore, driver can reach the parking spaces in a timely matter and leaving the system in short period of time. In the case of the elapsed time is 30 minutes, the APTS obtained by slow arrival rate was 17.29 sec, followed by medium arrival rate, 19.74 sec and fast arrival rate, 21.65 sec. APTS for each category of arrival rate has recorded higher values compared with the result achieved during 10 minutes of running the system. This is due to the drivers had to park their car farther, as the nearest parking spaces have been occupied.

Figure 5: Shortest Path Route from stimulation

III. PERFORMANCE EVALUATION The diagram show in the Fig.7 reveals the graph of Estimate Average Period of Time in System (APTS) versus Elapsed Time. “APTS” is the duration that the driver starting driving from the entrance to the assigned parking lot successfully. The “Elapsed Time” in the diagram is the duration (time) for running the stimulation. The value of “APTS” is taken from the average of 10 sets’ stimulations data whereas the values of “Elapsed Time” are fixed as 10 minute, 30 minute, 60minute and 120minute in the simulation. There are 3 types of arrival rate to be tested in the simulation as the following diagram. Arrival Rate Fast Medium Slow

The APTS results obtained for each of the arrival rate after 60 minutes of running the system were close to each other. The APTS recorded at 60 minutes by slow arrival rate was 20.87 sec, medium arrival rate was 21.43 sec, and fast arrival rate was 21.98 sec. Each of the arrival rates has reached the same point after 120 minutes of running the system. This point can be treated as the saturation point as the differences for all rates were small and the effects of arrival rate can be ignored. The saturation point happens when the car parking spaces were almost fully occupied and drivers have to reach the parking spaces in the remote location of the car park.

Mean time estimation for new arrival 7.5 seconds 15 seconds 25 seconds

From the result, it can be concluded that the more cars enter the car park and had been assigned to the specific parking lot, the farther the assigned parking lot that a driver will get as the nearest parking slot have been occupied by the other cars that entered earlier. Additionally, the operation of WMCPS is stable and efficient as the negative impact to the performance of WMCPS in the case for high arrival rate is small and is ignorable.

Figure 6: Category of Arrival Rate

From the table show in Fig.6, the inter arrival rate for the stimulation model can be categorized into 3 types (Fast, Medium, Slow). For the category of fast arrival rate, the average inter arrival time for a new car to enter the car park is 7.5 seconds whereas the category of medium arrival rate is 15 seconds and finally the slow arrival rate category is recorded as 25 seconds.

IV. CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORK Wireless Mobile-based Car parking System (WMCPS) has been developed using PHP and SMS service approach. This particular system will search for an available parking space using shortest path algorithm (BFS algorithm) and print the specific parking lot ID on the ticket that the driver taken before they enter the car park. Besides, the system allows the driver to request for a new assigned parking lot via SMS if the previous assigned parking lot is occupied. The system has been tested on a stimulation model with different conditions such as slow arrival rate, medium arrival rate and fast arrival rate. By simulation results, it shows that WMCPS can allocate the best available parking space to the driver in term of providing the shortest path distance. Furthermore, the

Figure 7: APTS vs. Elapsed Time

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result also shows that the performance of the system is less affected by the arrival rate of car that enters the car park. It is because when the car park is nearly full, drivers have to reach for parking spaces in the remote location of the car park. Feature of the SMS service is able to resolve the problem of failure parking that happened in car park. The WMCPS will be extended by considering the integration of GPS technology to provide guidance to the drivers to achieve a more reliability system in future.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breadth-first_search

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