Vehicle speed estimation using acoustic wave patterns

TitleVehicle speed estimation using acoustic wave patterns
Publication TypeJournal Article
AuthorsV. Cevher, R. Chellappa, and J. H. McClellan
Abstract

We estimate a vehicle’s speed, wheelbase length, and its tire track length by jointly estimating its acoustic wave-pattern using a single passive acoustic sensor that records the vehicle’s drive-by noise. The acoustic wave-pattern is determined using three envelope shape (ES) components, which approximate the shape variations of the received signal’s power envelope. We incorporate the parameters of the ES components along with estimates of the vehicle engine RPM and the number of cylinders, and the vehicle’s loudness and speed to form a vehicle profile vector. This vector provides a compressed statistics that can be used for vehicle identification and classification. We also provide possible reasons for why some of the existing methods are unable to provide unbiased vehicle speed estimates using the same framework. The approach is illustrated using vehicle speed estimation and classification results obtained with field data.

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to acknowledge the anonymous reviewers who improved the presentation of the paper. We would like to single out one reviewer, who contributed to the technical quality of the paper. We also would like to thank Ali Gurbuz, Faisal Shah, Carolyn Stanek, Dr. Milind Borkar, Aswin Sankaranarayanan, and Dr. Feng Guo for their help in collecting and processing the data.

Year of Publication2009
Journalaccepted at IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing
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