Cyber-Physical Systems: A Framework for Dynamic Traffic Light Control at Road Intersections

Published

April 2, 2016

Author(s)

Ossama M. Younis, Nader Moayeri

Abstract

Traffic control at road intersections is based on traffic lights. The control mechanism typically used for traffic lights operates based on a periodic schedule to change the light (red/yellow/green). In many cases, a different schedule is used in late night/early morning hours. This fixed control mechanism does not adequately account for changing traffic conditions, and is unaware of/unresponsive to congestion. In this work, we propose a framework for dynamic traffic light control at intersections. The framework relies on a simple sensor network to collect traffic data and includes novel protocols for traffic flow control to handle congestion and facilitate flow. We show that our proposed algorithms have low overhead and are practical to employ in live traffic flow scenarios. Through extensive simulations, we demonstrate the benefits of our framework in optimizing traffic flow metrics, such as traffic throughput, average vehicle waiting time, and vehicle waiting line length.

Conference Dates

April 3-6, 2016

Conference Location

Doha, QA

Conference Title

IEEE Wireless Communications and Networking Conference (WCNC)

Pub Type

Conferences

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Keywords

Traffic light control, traffic flow optimization, distributed algorithms, sensor networks

Citation

Younis, O. and Moayeri, N. (2016), Cyber-Physical Systems: A Framework for Dynamic Traffic Light Control at Road Intersections, IEEE Wireless Communications and Networking Conference (WCNC), Doha, QA, [online], https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=920024 (Accessed February 10, 2025)