A Simple and Efficient Traffic Light Preemption by Emergency Vehicles using Cellular Phone Wireless Control HUSSEIN R. AL-ZOUBI, BALQEES A. MOHAMMAD, SAHAR Z. SHATNAWI and ALAA I. KALAF Department of Computer Engineering Hijjawi Faculty for Engineering Technology Yarmouk University, Irbid 21163, Jordan. halzoubi@yu.edu.jo http://www.faculty.yu.edu.jo/halzoubi Abstract: - The short travel time is critical for the successful operation of emergency vehicles like ambulances and fire vehicles. Traffic lights at road intersections represent bottlenecks in the way of emergency vehicles especially at times of congestion. Traffic light preemption is one of the most useful approaches to help emergency vehicles reach the intended destination faster. Many methods have been proposed in the literature for the implementation of traffic light preemption. In this paper we propose a simple, yet efficient method for this purpose. Our proposed method is a new approach, where we use cellular phones to control the operation of traffic lights by the emergency vehicle driver. In the paper we illustrate the details and benefits of the proposed technique. Key-Words: - Traffic light preemption, Emergency vehicles, Cellular Phones. 1 Introduction The rapid growth in populated areas places burdens on the fire/rescue and other emergency vehicles [1]. Immediate arrival of patients and injured persons to the local hospital is a critical time issue that concerns several people like rescue teams, physicians, health authorities and patients themselves. More generally, in critical situations, emergency vehicles need to get to the scene as fast as possible to save lives and proprietary. Traffic signal preemption for emergency vehicles helps in reducing delay time, improving safety and minimizing the cost [1]. Using signal preemption to provide emergency vehicles a green light at intersections can reduce conflicts, improve emergency response times, and reduce other drivers confusion and thus can dramatically reduce the number of emergency vehicle crashes. This has the potential to translate into cost savings for the community. Emergency vehicle traffic signal preemption systems are a promising approach which comes with many benefits for individuals and the community. There has been extensive research on this subject from different perspectives. The subject of automatic traffic light control systems has also gained special importance in the recent years [2] - [4]. In this paper, we propose using wireless cellular phone transmissions to perform the operation of preempting traffic lights by emergency vehicles. The emergency vehicle driver uses a cellular telephone to call another cellular telephone embedded with the traffic light controller, which triggers the preemption signal that switches the state of the traffic light to the emergency preemption state. At this point, the green light is granted to the direction from which the emergency vehicle is approaching. The traffic light switches back to its normal state after a specified amount of time that enables the emergency vehicle to pass the intersection safely. To the best of our knowledge, we think that this idea is novel. 2 Design Description The proposed system consists of a sender mobile phone, a receiver mobile phone, a dual-tone multiple frequency (DTMF) Mathematical Methods and Techniques in Engineering and Environmental Science ISBN: 978-1-61804-046-6 167