Macroscopic Fundamental Diagram (MFD) Based on Vehicle-to-Infrastructure (V2I) Connected Vehicle Data

The applications of Macroscopic or Network Fundamental Diagram (MFD or NFD) of urban road network in practice have attracted increased attention over the last few years. However, the detection of MFD in urban street environment remains a challenging task even with probe vehicle data from mobile GPS, Bluetooth, and cellphone sensors. This paper explores a potential method of observing the MFD on urban streets through Vehicle-to-Infrastructure (V2I) wireless communications under Vehicular Ad-hoc NETworks (VANETs) environment. In Connected Vehicle Technologies, vehicles equipped with Dedicated Short Range Communication (DSRC) OBU (On-Board Unit) can transmit vehicle safety messages including its location and vehicle states to a Roadside Unit (RSU). When aggregated together, the vehicle trajectory information can be used to generate MFD within the communication range of RSU. In this study, the authors investigate the methodology to generate MFDs through V2I communications in VANETs and explore the potential characteristics of MFD through combined traffic and VANET simulation. A simulation test bed based on real-world Sioux Falls network is established in VISSM. The wireless data transmissions between OBUs and RSUs are simulated by the NS-3 (Discrete Event Network Simulator-3) simulation platform. The simulation results illustrate the feasibility of monitoring urban street MFD in V2I communication. The MFDs under different VANET radio signal loss models are compared, and the results indicate a significant influence of the wireless characteristics of VANET on the observed MFDs. However, the observed MFD still retain key characteristics such as hysteresis loop direction and traffic breakdown and recovery time.

• Supplemental Notes:
  • This paper was sponsored by TRB committee AHB45 Traffic Flow Theory and Characteristics.
• Corporate Authors:

  Transportation Research Board

  500 Fifth Street, NW
  Washington, DC  United States  20001
• Authors:
  • Xu, Zhe
  • Jin, Peter J
  • Jiang, Xiaowen
  • Ran, Bin
• Conference:
  • Transportation Research Board 94th Annual Meeting
  • Location: Washington DC, United States
  • Date: 2015-1-11 to 2015-1-15
• Date: 2015

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Digital/other
• Features: Figures; Maps; References; Tables;
• Pagination: 17p
• Monograph Title: TRB 94th Annual Meeting Compendium of Papers

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Dedicated short range communications; Macroscopic traffic flow; Mobile communication systems; Traffic data; Urban highways; Vehicle to infrastructure communications; Vehicular ad hoc networks
• Geographic Terms: Sioux Falls (South Dakota)
• Subject Areas: Data and Information Technology; Highways; Operations and Traffic Management; I72: Traffic and Transport Planning;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01551100
• Record Type: Publication
• Report/Paper Numbers: 15-0749
• Files: TRIS, TRB, ATRI
• Created Date: Jan 27 2015 11:21AM