Model predictive control in urban traffic network management

Abstract

The paper investigates a model predictive control (MPC) strategy specialized in urban traffic management in order to relieve traffic congestion, reduce travel time and improve homogenous traffic flow. Over the theory the realization of the control method is also presented. To validate the effectiveness of the controller a busy traffic network was chosen for test field. The MPC strategy was implemented into the test network control system (hardware in loop simulation). The applied environment is a microscopic traffic simulator with mathematical software and proper computational applications for the evaluation. The simulation results prove the effectiveness of the designed MPC based traffic control strategy. The system is able to improve the network efficiency and reduce travel time, creating optimal flow in the network subjected to control input constraints.