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In current days, the safety of private and civic vehicles is the main cause for anxiety. A tracking system can be installed in a vehicle to confirm safety while traveling. Besides, policemen can track the signal released by the tracking system to locate a stolen vehicle. The Telegraph informed that the rate of stolen vehicle was 300,000 in 2002, but in 2014 it fell under 100,000 due to implementation of security systems (Rahman et al., 2016).
School transport is one of the most important transportation that needs safety in its top priorities. There are millions of children riding the school bus in European Union and United States, as well as in many cities all over the world daily. However, children (especially elementary school children) are vulnerable and cannot defend or protect themselves from any attack (Zambada et al., 2015).
According to a recent American statistic, from 2003 to 2012, 119 school pedestrians in United States with age under 19 years have died in accidents involving school buses; 65% were crushed through school transportation, 5% working as school transport automobiles and 30% by other vehicles elaborated in accidents (Fatalities and Group 2014). The objective of Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) is to create a smart and secure transportation system, taking into account all stakeholders, including government establishments, parents, as well a’s university (Tomas et al. 2013).
Vehicle tracking by using satellite positioning systems, such as Global Positioning System (GPS) or the Russia's version of GPS called (GLONASS), it can be highly beneficial, especially during traffic jams or adverse weather environments (Tomas et al. 2013). Today, GPS finds wide applicability in a number of applications, commonly in the navigation area, tracking etc. (Kumar n.d.; Academy 2010).
Assisted GPS (A-GPS) systems help in increasing the sensitivity of the GPS reception and decreasing time-to-first-fix (TTFF). The central idea behind A-GPS is to deliver assistance information to the GPS receiver over a wireless network. Using this information, moving devices (like mobiles, vehicles) equipped with A-GPS can calculate locations faster and in much more challenging situations. An estimate of the location will be calculated at a server by using the feedback information received from the A-GPS receiver. Based on where the position calculations are conducted, A-GPS methods are categorized as either mobile-based or network based (Alliance 2007).
Nowadays, there exist several systems that are used to track the location of school bus. In (Dinkar and Shaikh 2011), the authors demonstrate the progress of an Internet of Things (IoT) based bus monitoring system. They show that, when the localization and speed of the sensors are adjusted, the system helps many stakeholders (parents, the government, the school and many other authorities) save real time path of the school bus performance, which result in a better controlled bus. In (Saranya et al.2013), a tracking system with a child module is proposed that is to be carried by children. The system transmits the tracking data to a database and a mobile device. This system has the inherent disadvantage that it may not be appropriate for children to carry the module due to security reasons and that broad-scale distribution of the modules may be quite expensive.
The work presented in (Mori et al. 2011) investigates a tracking system that employs android terminals. Those terminals connect among themselves via Bluetooth technology to form clusters. The clusters transfer the related information using a WLAN. The main weakness of this system is that the cost is high. Many commercial systems dedicated for following children utilize Bluetooth-based strategies.