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Internet of Things-based Vehicle Tracking and Monitoring System

Conference Paper · December 2021

DOI: 10.1109/ICOSST53930.2021.9683883

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 2021 15th International Conference on Open Source Systems and Technologies (ICOSST)

Internet of Things-based Vehicle Tracking and

Monitoring System
Sidra Jawad Hadeera Munsif Arsal Azam
Dept. of Electrical Engineering Dept. of Electrical Engineering Dept. of Electrical Engineering
National University of Computer and National University of Computer and National University of Computer and
Emerging Sciences, Lahore campus Emerging Sciences, Lahore campus Emerging Sciences, Lahore campus
Lahore, Pakistan Lahore, Pakistan Lahore, Pakistan
[email protected] [email protected] [email protected]

Arham Hasib Ilahi Saima Zafar

Dept. of Electrical Engineering Dept. of Electrical Engineering
2021 15th International Conference on Open Source Systems and Technologies (ICOSST) | 978-1-6654-1305-3/21/$31.00 ©2021 IEEE | DOI: 10.1109/ICOSST53930.2021.9683883

National University of Computer and National University of Computer and

Emerging Sciences, Lahore campus Emerging Sciences, Lahore campus
Lahore, Pakistan Lahore, Pakistan
[email protected] [email protected]

Abstract— Vehicles play an integral part in the life of a transmitting, sensing, and processing important and sensitive
human being by facilitating in everyday tasks. The major data and ultimately storing the wirelessly received data to a
concern that arises with this fact is that the rate of vehicle thefts remote storage where the data can be analyzed, stored and
have increased exponentially and retrieving them becomes later on be presented in an organized form. Furthermore, the
almost impossible as the responsible party completely alters the
stolen vehicles, leaving them untraceable. Ultimately, tracking
end user can efficiently access the data using interfaces such
and monitoring of vehicles using on-vehicle sensors is a as mobile or web applications. Vehicle monitoring and
promising and an efficient solution. The Internet of Things tracking system using IoT is one of the most widely
(IoT) is expected to play a vital role in revolutionizing the implemented IoT applications to date. The modern day
Security and Safety industry through a system of sensor system involves tracking and monitoring the exact location
networks by periodically sending the data from the sensors to of the vehicle using GPS technology so that if the vehicle
the cloud for storage, from where it can be accessed to view or gets stolen, appropriate measures can be taken using the
take any necessary actions (if required). The main contributions current latitude and longitude location of the vehicle. A
of this paper are the implementation and results of the similar type of system was discussed by Alrifaie and Roslan
prototype of a vehicle tracking and monitoring system. The
system comprises of an Arduino UNO board connected to the
[1], where they reviewed a monitoring and tracking system
Global Positioning System (GPS) module, Neo-6M, which using GPS and Global System for Mobile Communications
senses the exact location of the vehicle in the form of latitude (GSM) to track the exact location of theft vehicle and reports
and longitude, and the ESP8266 Wi-Fi module, which sends the the status to end user. The GSM module sends a message to
data to the Application Programming Interface (API) Cloud the Arduino board.
service, ThingSpeak, for storage and analyzing. An Android This paper presents the implementation details and
based mobile application is developed that utilizes the stored results of the prototype of an IoT based vehicle monitoring
data from the Cloud and presents the user with the findings. and tracking system as shown in Figure 1. The system
Results show that the prototype is not only simple and cost consists of an onboard module that resides inside the vehicle,
effective, but also efficient and can be readily used by everyone
from all walks of life to protect their vehicles.
in such a manner that is not visible to anyone, that is to be
tracked and a base station that monitors the longitude and
Keywords—Arduino, Cloud, GPS, Internet of Things, latitude of the vehicle. The onboard module is composed of a
Sensor networks. central Arduino UNO board that has a GPS module, Neo-
6M, connected at the input which tracks the location of the
I. INTRODUCTION
vehicle and a Wi-Fi module, ESP8266, at the output of the
The past decade has experienced a rampant growth in the board that transmits the sensed location wirelessly to the API
number of vehicles, either it be cars, buses, trucks or Cloud service, ThingSpeak, for analyzing and storage. An
motorcycles, all around the world. This luxury, which was Android based mobile application is created that utilizes the
once an upper-class indulgence, is now available to sensed data and presents the user with the exact location of
everyone either for commercial or private use. With this the vehicle on a map.
stated fact came the dilemma of vehicle theft. Vehicle theft Our proposed prototype design is not only compact but is
also went through an exponential increase as the also inexpensive. Its compact feature makes the system
availability of targets for criminals had grown. The rate at incognito to the thieves so they’re unable find it on the
which the vehicles could be recovered varied as the vehicle. In this paper, we present the framework of a
responsible party would completely change the vehicle, prototype of an IoT based vehicle monitoring and tracking
leaving it unrecognizable and untraceable to the system. The paper is structured as follows: Section II
jurisdictions’ police department. This was where Internet of illustrates the related work, Section III presents the hardware
things played a pivotal role in revolutionizing the Security details of the prototype. Section IV demonstrates the
and Safety industry by aiding in retrieving the stolen vehicles software details of the system, Section V presents the
on time. IoT is a new concept which has been introduced and experimental results of the proposed design of the system,
has evolved overtime via the convergence of wireless and finally Section VI concludes the paper.
technologies. Such type of technology comprises of
sophisticated devices that are capable of wirelessly

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 2021 15th International Conference on Open Source Systems and Technologies (ICOSST)

Fig. 1. Internet of Things-based Vehicle Tracking System

II. RELATED WORK and video is stored to be watched again if needed. Nag [7]
The Internet of Things is a six-layered architecture that is presents a low cost system where he used an Arduino Mega,
revolutionizing inventions. IoT converges data obtained from GPS module, GSM module and ThingSpeak. The system is
different types of devices to a virtual platform using the specially designed for theft detection. The theft is detected
internet infrastructure and presents an infinite number of by comparing distance of the parked position of the car and
opportunities as the devices we use are equipped with current position of the car using the Haversine formula. The
internet, putting a powerful source of information at our owner can check all the information using the Android
fingertips. Most of our devices are already smart but fail to application which is developed on Android Studio.
communicate or share information with each other, for such III. HARDWARE DESIGN
cases IoT is the solution. Some useful applications for this
are smart traffic system, smart environment, smart home, This section covers the details of the hardware
smart hospitals, smart agriculture and smart retailing [2]. The components used and shows the block diagram of the
smart devices use sensors to transmit data to another complete hardware design. The system comprises of a
computer or software. This allows higher levels of central device called a microcontroller, which acts as the
automation and its importance can be judged by the fact that core of the system by performing all the main processes. In
127 objects are synced each second. There are numerous the proposed system, the microcontroller is interfaced with
reasons IoT is becoming the norm as it allows exchange of the GPS sensor, which acts as an input device, and a Wi-Fi
more data, devices connected to more sensors means that module, which acts as an output device. The microcontroller
large amount of data can be collected from different receives the latitude and longitude readings from the GPS
locations instantly, it tracks and monitors things ensuring the sensor, and sends these readings via Wi-Fi module to the
quality of things, adding automation to things, saving time cloud, ThingSpeak, over the Internet.
and cost, increasing efficiency and promising a better quality A. Hardware Block Diagram
of life [3]. A very popular use of IoT is in vehicle detection
and tracking systems. This is useful as it provides real time The hardware block diagram of the proposed system is
tracking, travel history, event alerts and better control over shown in Figure 2. The figure shows the functionality of the
assets. If a business implements this system they can also use system. The GPS sensor receives the information of position
this for better customer service. All this ensures that the from the satellite, and sends this information to the
vehicle is safe and well maintained [4]. microcontroller. The microcontroller uploads this data to the
A closely related work was presented by San [5] where cloud ThingSpeak over wireless link based on Wi-Fi
with combination of a smart phone and an Arduino this standard implemented in the Wi-Fi module.
system was made. Not only is this easy to use but also is
very cost effective. Arduino UNO is used to control the B. Microcontroller
GSM module and GPS receiver. The GPS module is used to The microcontroller used in our system is the Arduino
get geographic coordinates, while the GSM module transmits UNO, which is the central unit that interfaces with the GPS
and updates vehicle location on the database at regular sensor and the Wi-Fi module. The reason for selecting
intervals. Muhammad and Ibrahim [6] discussed a bus Arduino UNO microcontroller is that it has sufficient pins to
tracking system to track bus schedule, where Arduino UNO fulfill the requirement of our system and as no data storage is
with the combination of GPS was used. For software, needed therefore its memory size is reasonable. Furthermore,
Google Earth and GpsGate were used. GPS continuously it is low-cost and simple to use. The Arduino UNO is a
takes in data from the satellite and stores the values for microcontroller board based on the ATmega328P chip,
longitude and latitude. Arduino UNO sends this data to which is the heart of the board [8]. It has an operating
Google Earth which broadcasts this on to different social voltage of 5V and requires an input voltage of 7V to 12V.
media platforms such as ManyCam, Google+ Hangouts, The board has 14 digital input/output (I/O) pins, of which 6
YouTube and Facebook. On YouTube, the streaming is live provide PWM output, and it has 6 analog input pins [9].

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 2021 15th International Conference on Open Source Systems and Technologies (ICOSST)

Fig. 2. Hardware block diagram of the system

A 16MHz crystal provides the system clock. A reset push following pins/connections:
button allows restarting of the uploaded program. An on-  Ground of module to ground of Arduino
board USB connector is used to connect the board to the  VCC of module to 3.3V of Arduino
computer. The board can be powered by the computer  TX pin of module to pin 10 of Arduino
through the USB port or by an external battery which can be  Receive (RX) pin of module to pin 11 of Arduino
connected to the board via its power jack.  CH_PD pin of module to 3.3V of Arduino
C. GPS Sensor
IV. SOFTWARE DETAILS
The GPS sensor used in our system is NEO-6M. The
reason for choosing NEO-6M GPS module is that it can This section covers the details of the software
track up to 22 satellites on 50 channels, has a high level of components used and shows the block diagram of the
sensitivity with only 45mA current consumption and a complete software design. The hardware model sends off
Power Save Mode (PSM) [10]. The NEO-6M has an data over to the cloud, ThingSpeak over the internet, which
operating voltage of 2.7V to 3.6V and a default baud rate of is then picked up by the software model for further use. The
9600 bits per second (bps) [11]. It has an antenna attached to software model consists of an internet source connected to an
it, which receives data from satellites to get the module’s in-house mobile application, which extracts data from the
location. The module has a built-in LED which blinks when cloud for further processing and visualization.
the sensor finds a satellite. Once working, National Marine A. Software for Configuring Hardware and Sending Data to
Electronics Association (NMEA) sentences are used for Cloud
communication between the module and the satellites. The
The Arduino IDE was used to program the
required longitude and latitude are extracted from these
microcontroller to read the GPS data and send it to the
sentences. The TinyGPS library was used to simplify the
Cloud. The Software Serial library was included to allow
NMEA sentences; it provides built-in functions for
serial communication between the microcontroller and both
extracting the longitude and latitude values [12]. The sensor
the sensors. Serial communication was initiated at a baud
was connected to the Arduino UNO board using the
rate of 9600 for GPS sensor and 115200 for the Wi-Fi
following pins:
sensor. The Wi-Fi module was set up as a client and
 Ground of sensor with ground of Arduino
connected to the router using AT commands. Then, the GPS
 VCC of sensor to 3.3V of Arduino sensor data, latitude and longitude, was read by the
 Transmission (TX) pin of sensor with pin 2 of microcontroller. ThingSpeak was used to analyze the sensor
Arduino data, in real-time, in the form of graphs, and this data was
D. Wi-Fi Module also used by the mobile application to get vehicle location
[15]. The Wi-Fi module was used to connect to the host,
We used Wi-Fi module, ESP8266, in our system [13]. Its
ThingSpeak, and send data to the Cloud using the API key of
purpose is to send the data received by microcontroller to the
ThingSpeak channel, at port 80. In ThingSpeak, two fields
cloud, over the internet. The reason for choosing this module
were used, one to display latitude readings and the other to
is that it is low-cost, is integrated with full TCP/IP protocol
display longitude readings.
and comes with pre-programmed Attention (AT) commands
firmware. The ESP8266 has a maximum working voltage of B. Mobile Application
3.6V [14]. The module can be used as either client or server. The mobile application developed for the system is a
In the proposed system, it is being used as a client, and AT software component that utilizes the user’s smartphone for
commands is used to connect it to the router by assigning an processing and visualization of the data that exists in the
Internet Protocol (IP) address to the module. The module cloud. A smartphone was chosen as a visualization entity due
was connected to the Arduino UNO board using the

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 2021 15th International Conference on Open Source Systems and Technologies (ICOSST)

to its portability and processing power. The GPS data is

extracted from the Cloud and then it is visualized using the
graphical interface provided by Google maps on the mobile
application. The mobile application uses the location
services provided by the GPS service and uses the Google
service to map the coordinates provided by the cloud,
ThingSpeak. The user is also provided with the ability to
create their account. The sign-up page as shown in Figure 3
(a) provides the user to provide their details to the
application which then, in response, sends the data to the
database for storage and further use. The user is needed to
provide their Name, CNIC for identification, Home Address,
and personal Phone Number, all of which is then stored on to
the application’s database. This information is used to create
a user database where the user’s interaction with the app is Fig. 4. 3-D tracking imagery
stored for future use. The user is also provided with a sign in
page as shown in Figure 3 (b) for whenever they want to
look into their data stored on the database and to track the
application usage. The mobile application also provides
fingerprint identification for easy sign in.
C. Graphical Interface
The mobile application employs the Google services to
display the coordinates provided by the cloud in order to
provide a graphical representation as to where the user entity
lies. Our mapping system provides imagery zoom up to 18
levels, where the user also has the ability to opt for satellite
imagery. The graphical representation provides 3D imaging
as well for easy tracking of the user entity.
Fig. 5. Software block diagram
D. Google Maps Platform
For the imagery system, the Google maps services was The figure shows the functionality of the system. The
opted for its high speed mapping service and low latency ThingSpeak cloud provides the application with the
imaging system as shown in Figure 4. For this service an longitude and latitude data location of the device. The
(API) key was applied for in advance in order to sanction the Mobile application opts for the in-built location services and
legal use of this service. The Google API service was the applied Google services to process the location data into
invoked in order to allow the service to run on our viable coordinates. Then these coordinates are displayed on
application. the Graphical Interface in map form. This enables the user to
view live location of the vehicle on his/her mobile phone.
E. Software Block Diagram
The block diagram of the proposed system is shown in V. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS
Figure 5. This section presents the experimental results of our
system. We show the hardware setup of the tracking and
monitoring system, the sensor data and the live tracking tool
available to our users on our mobile application along with
the graphical record of the longitude and latitude of the
vehicle.
A. Hardware Setup
Figure 6 shows the experimental setup of our vehicle
tracking system. The longitude and latitude coordinates are
collected using the GPS module, and then it is sent to
ThingSpeak, using the Wi-Fi module.
B. Graphical Record of the Longitude and Latitude
Figure 7 shows the visualization of the latitude and
longitude coordinates that are processed and sent to the
ThingSpeak server every second. On the X-axis of the
graphs are the date and time in real time while Y-axis
corresponds to the longitude and latitude. We changed the
position of the GPS module to get a different reading every
time to ensure that if the vehicle location was changing
continuously, the GPS module was able to detect that
Fig. 3. Mobile application (a) Sign-up Page (b) Sign-in Page efficiently.

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 2021 15th International Conference on Open Source Systems and Technologies (ICOSST)

Fig. 6. Hardware implementation circuitry

Fig. 8. (a) Live vehicle tracking on map (b) User’s vehicle data on mobile
application

The onboard module and the mobile application were

able to provide the exact location of the vehicle on the map
at any moment in time. The user can easily keep track of the
whereabouts of their vehicle in the scenario of it getting
stolen and certainly recover it on time.
REFERENCES
[1] M. F. Alrifaie, N. Harum, M. F. I. Othman, I. Roslan and M. A.
Shyaa1, “Vehicle Detection and Tracking System IoT based: A
Review”, Int Res J Eng Technol, 2018, vol. 5, pp. 1237-1241.
[2] M. U. Farooq, M. Waseem, S. Mazhar, A. Khairi and T. Kamal, “A
Review on Internet of Things (IoT)”, Int. J. Comput. Appl, 2015, vol.
113 - no.1, pp. 1-7.
[3] M. Tim, The internet of things (IOT): 5 reasons why the world needs
it, Zeux
[4] Important Benefits Of GPS Tracking Device, Easy Track India
[5] N. N. S. Hlaing, M. Naing and S. S. Naing, “GPS and GSM Based
Vehicle Tracking System”, Int. J. Trend Res, 2019, vol. 3, pp. 271-
275.
[6] M. Y. M. Ibrahim and L. Audah, “Real-Time Bus Location
Monitoring Using Arduino”, Advances in Electrical and Electronic
Engineering: From Theory to Applications AIP Conf. Proc. 1883,
020016-1–020016-10; doi: 10.1063/1.5002034
[7] S. N. Paing, M. Z. Oo, M. Othman and N. Funabiki, “A Personal Use
Vehicle Anti-Theft Tracking System Using IoT Platform”, IJSCE, 2-
19, vol. 4, pp. 1-7.
[8] Arduino Uno Rev3 Arduino Official Store.
[9] Arduino Uno.
[10] Interface ublox NEO-6M GPS Module with Arduino Last Minute
Engineers.
[11] NEO-6 u-blox 6 GPS Modules Data Sheet
[12] M. Hart, TinyGPS Arduino Libraries.
Fig. 7. Co-ordinates on ThingSpeak (a) Latitude (b) Longitude [13] ESP8266 WiFi Module with PCB Antenna ElectroPeak Store.
[14] ESP8266 - WiFi Module ESP8266 Pinout, Pin Configuration,
C. Tracking And Monitoring Mobile Application Features, Example Circuit & Datasheet.
[15] ThingSpeak for IoT Projects IoT Analytics - ThingSpeak Internet of
Figure 8 (a) illustrates the live location of the user’s Things.
vehicle on a map on the mobile application. The GPS
coordinates are received from the ThingSpeak cloud and are
thus plotted on the map. Figure 8 (b) shows the data of the
user’s vehicle that is also going to be displayed on our
mobile application.
VI. CONCLUSION
The IoT is now slowly being integrated within the
Security and Safety Industry as it is expected to serve as a
building block for numerous innovations. Furthermore, an
IoT based Vehicle monitoring and tracking system was
implemented using a GPS module.

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