Automatic Wireless Announcement System (AWAS) is a prototype software system designed by the U2Labs and CCNY for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA).   AWAS generates and delivers public service, next bus stop and emergency announcements from a central location to one, all or a selected group of buses in the bus fleet. AWAS is capable of sending such messages in multiple languages and either as text or audio messages. On board AWAS unit allows for on-site testing of bus announcement capabilities.

AWARD - City College of New York ( JSR Publication ) 

Read more: Automatic Wireless Announcement System (AWAS) for MTA Bus Fleet

This pilot focused on the capability of providing a contactless bank card for fare collection in MTA Buses and MTA subway platforms using a commercial network and NYCWiN. A set of experiments were conducted in real-life conditions using DoITT test vehicles and MTA Buses which were wired with equipment specifically for these types of experiments. New software tools were implemented to emulate various bank card operations.

In this pilot we developed a real-time bus tracking system, and conducted a set of extensive experiments for bus location tracking capabilities, including dead reckoning service for MTA buses for which temporarily there is no GPS signal available. This pilot provided valuable information for both Bus Time service to display bus locations and contactless fare payment systems. We developed estimation algorithms for determining the position of these orphaned buses and their arrival times. We studied the feasibility of traffic light control application using location information. All experiments have been repeated several times on a test vehicle and MTA buses using a commercial wireless network and NYCWiN. We provided experimental results to validate the simultaneous usage of both our bus location tracking and contactless fare payment applications using bank cards.

The goal of this pilot was to provide wireless networking on MTA subways using wireless mesh networks and to analyze the number of cell phone connections per base station using a wireless mesh network for VoIP applications (using either voice or video connectivity).

We investigated the relationship between an acceptable bandwidth provided to a user and the locations of the base stations considering different factors that are typical to transportation system stations such as obstacles (stairs, columns and passengers and passing trains which interrupt the line of sight connectivity to a mesh router) and the depth measured from the street level for a given MTA subway platform or mezzanine.