An IoT-Based Intelligent System for Real-Time Parking Monitoring and Automatic Billing

The rapid growth of private vehicles in urban areas has resulted in severe parking congestion, fuel wastage, and increased carbon emissions. Ineffi- cient parking management further contributes to traffic delays and inaccurate billing. This paper presents a low-cost IoT-based real-time parking monitoring and automatic billing system designed using embedded edge- computing principles. Infrared sensors are used to de- tect parking slot occupancy, while an Arduino Uno microcontroller performs local processing and time- based billing. A 16×2 LCD provides real-time parking status and billing information, and a NodeMCU ESP8266 enables optional wireless monitoring through a mobile interface. Unlike cloud-centric solutions, the proposed system operates autonomously with minimal communi- cation overhead, making it suitable for small-scale and resource-constrained environments. Experimental results demonstrate reliable slot detection with response time below one second. The system contributes to sustainable communication and computing by minimizing unneces- sary vehicle movement, reducing energy consumption, and lowering infrastructure complexity.