Wireless magnetic sensor networks offer a very attractive, low-cost alternative to inductive loops
for traffic measurement in freeways and at intersections. In addition to vehicle count, occupancy
and speed, the sensors yield traffic information (such as vehicle classification) that cannot be
obtained from loop data. Because such networks can be deployed in a very short time, they can
also be used (and reused) for temporary traffic measurement. This paper reports the detection
capabilities of magnetic sensors, based on two field experiments. The first experiment collected
a two-hour trace of measurements on Hearst Avenue in Berkeley. The vehicle detection rate is
better than 99 percent (100 percent for vehicles other than motorcycles); and estimates of vehicle
length and speed appear to be better than 90 percent. Moreover, the measurements also give
inter-vehicle spacing or headways, which reveal such interesting phenomena as platoon formation
downstream of a traffic signal. Results of the second experiment are preliminary. Sensor data from
37 passing vehicles at the same site are processed and classified into 6 types. Sixty percent of the
vehicles are classified correctly, when length is not used as a feature. The classification algorithm
can be implemented in real time by the sensor node itself, in contrast to other methods based on
high scan-rate inductive loop signals, which require extensive offline computation. We believe that
when length is used as a feature, 80-90 percent of vehicles will be correctly classified.