Solutions

Trafsense® – Road monitoring the right way

Trafsense® is a road monitoring system with unique time and space resolution combined with groundbreaking low lifecycle costs, also for long stretches of road. Its performance is not affected by weather or line of sight.

The Trafsense® road monitoring system continuously tracks the position, speed and lane position of each individual vehicle by analysing the vibrations caused by its wheels


What Trafsense® will do for your Automatic Incident Detection (AID)

Trafsense® monitors all vehicles individually and continuously over as many kms as needed. This includes both their longitudinal positions along the monitored road and lane identification. 

"However, no magic bullet exists for detecting incidents in tunnels."

(Jang, The Open Transportation Journal, 31 Dec 2018)

Trafsense® road monitoring system has proven Dr Jang wrong

Every vehicle receives a unique ID when entering the monitored road section. The vehicle’s position is monitored continuously, including lane position and any lane changes.

Critical alarms and events such as ghost drivers (wrong-way driving), stopped vehicle, and queue formation are immediately detected, and real-time alarms are relayed to the traffic control center to support relevant damage control.

Furthermore, indirect detection of undesirable items and disturbances on the road is enabled by Trafsense®’s ability to analyse sudden shifts in the lane change pattern.


The video visualisation below demonstrates Trafsense® real-time data from a 2+2 carriage way with a speed limit of 100 km/h:

Video visualisation of Trafsense® real-time data from the Swedish Transport Administration’s test site on E16 near Borlänge (Sweden). Note that the number inside each vehicle icon is the speed in km/h.


Trafsense® road monitoring systems - Proven in the Scandinavian market


Examples of Trafsense®’s AID functionalities – Stopped vehicle

Examples of Trafsense®’s AID functionalities – Wrong-way detection

Examples of Trafsense®’s AID functionalities – Queue


Trafsense®’s benefits - AID and other applications


  1. Trafsense® fundamental uniqueness stems from the ability to continuously monitor every vehicle’s velocity, position and lane position, meter by meter along the monitored road. This is not affected by the road configuration, changes in the road lay-out or changing number of lanes.
  2. The Trafsense® sensor element is a passive fibreoptic cable embedded in the road. This outdoor plant has no electrical or electronic parts vulnerable to the harsh road environments.
  3. Trafsense® performance is not affected by day or night, changing seasons, rain, slit, hail, snow, fog, smoke, or air pollution, nor snowy and icy roads.
  4. Trafsense® performance is not affected by road turns or slopes, or changing road lightning. There are no line-of-sight requirements.
  5. Trafsense® offers a reduction in lifetime cost of more than three times compared to conventional technologies for automatic incident detection. Its high reliability and long life expectancy also strongly reduces the inconvenience of road closures.
  6. The Trafsense® physical measurement principle provides completely anonymized traffic data in full compliance with the EU GDPR directive. No additional anonymization of Trafsense® data is necessary.

The reliable real-time Trafsense® data give a unique foundation for data analysis and real-time incident detection. It also provides excellent information for e.g. adaptive traffic control via a traffic control center using variable message signs, traffic information (DAB-radio, push notifications via app) and future cooperating intelligent transportation systems (C-ITS).

There is a proven correlation between road conditions (sight, friction) and aggregated motorist behaviour. Trafsense®’s ability to precisely monitor vehicles and individual lanes gives an excellent foundation for such analysis.

Accurate Trafsense® traffic data are a valuable source of information which can be used in modelling, planning and optimizing future read systems in order to improve traffic safety and reliability, reducing risk and environmental footprint.

Trafsense® capabilities can also be extended to the detection of falling rocks, land slides and avalanches.


How Trafsense® works

Trafsense® road monitoring system is an autonomous smart sensor developed in the intersection between mobility and information technology. Trafsense® does not require the vehicles to be supporting any digital interfaces, radio devices, or carrying cell phones, GPS navigation, etc.



The Trafsense® system consists of two parts that must be installed for monitoring:

  1. A fiber optic sensor cable that is micro-trenched into the tarmac of the road. The cable is completely passive, containing no electrical cables or electronics. Fiber optic cables are commercially available and widely used in the telecommunication industry and have an expected lifetime of 25 years. The cable is terminated in a technical room or cabinet near the monitored road.

  2. The Trafsense® interrogator contains all active components and is rack-mounted in the technical room or cabinet where the fibre optic cable is terminated. All hardware is solid state, based on industrial telecommunication components with an expected lifetime of 25 years. The interrogator is therefore both reliable and easily available for  maintenance. The digital interfaces connecting to the customer systems are implemented in the interrogator, and a local database for storing historical traffic or metadata is also available. Trafsense® offers seamless integration with commercial SCADA systems.


The Trafsense® interrogator contains all active components and is rack-mounted in a technical room or cabinet somewhere along the monitored road section.

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