Car navigation system (CNS)

Abstract

As the rapid development of economy in various countries, road systems become more and more complex and vehicles increase in an incredible number per year. Traffic congestion is one of the greatest problems for these societies. The problem is especially serious for some developing and high population density Asian countries such as China and Thailand. Furthermore, as the raise of living standard, more and more people have their own car for entertainment purpose only. They are unfamiliar to the road system and traffic condition and would only drive their car in leisure time. The complex road system always gives them troubles in finding a right route to their destination. In order to solve these problems, many kinds of car navigation systems have been developed to help drivers to search their paths and get away from traffic congestion. Some of the old car navigation systems based on static map and data stored in CD-ROMs only which may not be accurate and cannot be updated dynamically. In recent years, car navigation systems have begun to take advantage of the Global Position System (GPS) to locate the position of vehicles, it makes real time tracking of vehicle position becomes possible which provides a more accurate result and more convenience to use. However, the road condition is changing minutes by minutes. Car navigation system would become more useful if it can receive the most updated map and real time traffic condition constantly from wireless communication channel. The major objective of this project is to develop a car navigation system which makes use of the GPS and GPRS to achieve real time tracking of vehicles, dynamic updating of digital map and predicting the occurrence of traffic congestion.