This thesis is framed within the need of traffic data acquisition in urban areas and also in the secondary road network in order to determine accurately the traffic conditions without the installation of costly infrastructure. The goal of this project is to introduce and analyse the feasibility of the proposed solution, which consists in using Bluetooth technology in floating vehicles driving on the road network, this approach is called Floating Car Observer based on Bluetooth technology (FCO-¬‐BT). It is intended to describe the methodology to follow in order to achieve the description of the current traffic conditions, and the key parameter, which is the required level of equipment, which means the amount of Floating vehicles driving on the road network. In the first part is introduced the basic knowledge of traffic data collection and its relations with the main traffic variables. It is also explained the method of Floating Car Observer including its origin and the current research, and also the basics of Bluetooth technology. Finally, the proposed FCO-¬‐BT method is presented. In order to evaluate the proposal, in the second part of this project are carried out simulations in a certain area of Kassel’s road network in function of the level of FCO vehicles, also known as penetration rate. The comparison of the results has been divided into three parts. The first one deals with the possibility to trace the trajectories of the vehicles from the detected points. In the second part is presented the methodology to calculate the travel times from the provided data. Furthermore, it includes an analysis of miscalculations. Due to the large amount of data, in the third part is performed a statistical calculation of the required subset of data. The obtained results showed that is needed a time interval of 45 minutes of the simulated time to draw conclusions of the overall traffic situation. The chapter is concluded with the description of the traffic state, which can be determined with the results of each level of equipment. In conclusion it can be said that FCO-¬‐BT method is a potential approach of traffic data collection to improve the traffic management. In this thesis has been traced trajectories as well as calculated accurate travel times. Concerning the level of equipment, the results do not show major differences. For this reason it is proposed for further researches to evaluate it for rates under 20%, to find the limit that provides right conclusions regarding the traffic state. This thesis ends with some perspectives for further study to enlarge the range of application of this method.
