Citation: Fourie, C.M.; Myburgh,
H.C. An Intra-Vehicular Wireless
Multimedia Sensor Network for
Smartphone-Based Low-Cost
Advanced Driver-Assistance Systems.
Sensors 2022, 22, 3026.
https://doi.org/10.3390/s22083026
Academic Editors: Alvaro Araujo
Pinto and Hacene Fouchal
Received: 18 January 2022
Accepted: 25 March 2022
Published: 15 April 2022
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Article
An Intra-Vehicular Wireless Multimedia Sensor Network
for Smartphone-Based Low-Cost Advanced
Driver-Assistance Systems
Christiaan M. Fourie * and Hermanus Carel Myburgh
Department of Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering, University of Pretoria,
Pretoria 0002, South Africa; herman.myburgh@up.ac.za
* Correspondence: u10118986@tuks.co.za
Abstract:
Advanced driver-assistance system(s) (ADAS) are more prevalent in high-end vehicles
than in low-end vehicles. Wired solutions of vision sensors in ADAS already exist, but are costly
and do not cater for low-end vehicles. General ADAS use wired harnessing for communication;
this approach eliminates the need for cable harnessing and, therefore, the practicality of a novel
wireless ADAS solution was tested. A low-cost alternative is proposed that extends a smartphone’s
sensor perception, using a camera-based wireless sensor network. This paper presents the design
of a low-cost ADAS alternative that uses an intra-vehicle wireless sensor network structured by a
Wi-Fi Direct topology, using a smartphone as the processing platform. The proposed system makes
ADAS features accessible to cheaper vehicles and investigates the possibility of using a wireless
network to communicate ADAS information in a intra-vehicle environment. Other ADAS smartphone
approaches make use of a smartphone’s onboard sensors; however, this paper shows the application
of essential ADAS features developed on the smartphone’s ADAS application, carrying out both
lane detection and collision detection on a vehicle by using wireless sensor data. A smartphone’s
processing power was harnessed and used as a generic object detector through a convolution neural
network, using the sensory network’s video streams. The network’s performance was analysed to
ensure that the network could carry out detection in real-time. A low-cost CMOS camera sensor
network with a smartphone found an application, using Wi-Fi Direct, to create an intra-vehicle
wireless network as a low-cost advanced driver-assistance system.
Keywords: ADAS; ADAS and smartphones; IVWSN; object detection; WMSN
1. Introduction
Vision from inside vehicles is becoming more common, especially in autonomous
vehicles. Sensory networks used within vehicles, and how their applications improve the
awareness of vehicles on the road, were investigated. Smartphones are used in forward,
lateral, and inside assistance ADAS applications, in object and lane detection, tracking,
and traffic sign detection. Forward assistance includes autonomous cruise control (ACC),
which assists drivers in automatically keeping a safe driving distance, and forward collision
avoidance (FCA), which provides a warning to the driver in the event of a potential accident.
Forward assistant methods use radar and LiDAR. FCA also uses sensors, such as radar
and LiDAR, but car manufacturers are using video in conjunction with radar, which has
opened up a wide range of topics in research studies, i.e., using image processing in object
detection, while sensor fusion techniques can be used to complement sensor devices for
vehicle detection [1–4].
Smartphones are cheaper alternatives to forward assistance ADAS. Many methods
of monitoring road and traffic conditions, using smartphones, have been proposed; the
first approaches used sensors, three-axis accelerometers, and GPS [
5
–
8
]. Vehicle detection
has been conducted using image processing, as well as alternatives to radar and LiDAR by
using local binary patterns (LBP) and Haar-like features to train AdaBoost
classifiers [9].
Sensors 2022, 22, 3026. https://doi.org/10.3390/s22083026 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/sensors
