A Parking Slot Allocation Framework Based on Virtual Voting and Adaptive Pricing Algorithm

Parking lot allocation problem has received much attention in recent years. There have been various works in the literature that target the parking slot allocation problem. However, most of these works use algorithms that run on centralized servers and are based on some predictions on historical data. Due to the dynamic nature of vehicular networks, the accuracy of such prediction models is not high which ends up in a chaotic situation for the parking lot owners as well as the vehicle owners. Therefore, a distributed Parking slot Allocation Framework based on Adaptive Pricing Algorithm and Virtual Voting is proposed in this paper. The proposed model is based on virtual voting and hashgraph consensus algorithm. Using the model, all users and parking lot owners can easily come to consensus finality about the allocation of a parking slot with the use of minimal bandwidth. The proposed model provides a fair, fast and cost-optimal parking slot allocation method. The perfect ordering of allocation requests is also maintained based on consensus timestamp. Further, an adaptive pricing model is proposed to enhance the overall revenue of the parking lot owners and comfort of the users. The proposed model is deterministic and can reduce the average parking cost and time. Performance evaluations reveal that the proposed model outperforms its counterparts in terms of accurate parking slot allocation, reduced cost and parking lot resource utilization.

I. Introduction

The number of motor vehicles is rapidly increasing worldwide and therefore the parking problem is attracting a lot of attention. It becomes very difficult to find a vacant parking slot in a densely populated area especially during peak hours. Drivers keep on circling the complete parking lot to find a single empty slot. Leaving the vehicle in an unauthorized space has its own security and legal issues. At times people avoid travelling by their private vehicles and prefer the discomfort of traveling by public vehicles just to avoid the problems faced in parking their vehicles [1]. Different centralized agencies take charge of the parking lots and charge heavily in order to allot a parking slot to the users. Here centralized agency refers to some third party contractors that are given charge of parking slot allocation to the users.