A Reference Architecture for Smart Car Parking Management Systems

Finding out an available car parking space has been one of the most crucial problems for the crowded cities, which causes such issues as traffic congestions, air pollutions, and stressful drivers. To mitigate the issues here, smart car parking management system (SPMS) solutions can be used which digitalise the parking processes and maximise the drivers’ productiveness. However, the existing SPMS solutions are either domain-specific or address the applications of particular techniques and technologies. None of the solutions in the literature propose any generic approach that can be re-used for the analysis and design of any SPMSs. In this paper, we propose a reference architecture (RA) for the SPMS product family. Performing comprehensive domain analysis, we provide a feature model of the common and varying features for SPMSs. We designed 4 architectural viewpoints, which are context, module, component&connector, and allocation. Each viewpoint addresses a different concern and proposes a generic solution that can be re-used for any specific SPMSs. To validate our RA design, we used the commercial 4Park SPMS application and specified its architecture using our RA viewpoints. We strongly believe that our RA design for SPMSs can be useful for the SPMS domain who develop SPMS solutions.