Deployment of a fully distributed system for improving urban traffic flows: A simulation-based performance analysis

Distributed, cooperative systems dedicated to road traffic self-organization are very attractive, but present some drawbacks. In particular, their cooperative nature makes them fairly inefficient when working with a reduced number of partners. This situation typically corresponds to the deployment stage, during which only a few vehicles cooperate. This time period cannot be avoided when pushing a new system to the market. We are interested in two features that are important for this kind of system: traffic jam detection and traffic alert transmission. For the first feature, we present a theoretical model that anticipates the proportion of equipped vehicles that allows an acceptable level of traffic jam detection, and we validate this model by simulation. For the second feature, we examine two ways to improve the system behaviour when the proportion of equipped vehicles is very low; their efficiency is tested through simulation. This study is innovative because the simulation platform we developed can take into account the directional behaviour of wireless communications in urban context for a low computational cost.

► Distributed Traffic Information Systems (DTISs) are difficult to push to the market.
► We focus here on performance of DTIS when the market penetration is low.
► A model for the prediction of traffic jam detection delay is proposed and tested.
► The lower bound of acceptable market penetration is demonstrated by simulation.
► The location of emission points is a key factor for success in urban context.