Simulation Study on the Application of Traffic-Flow Complexity Measure in Traffic Control
Fengtao Liu, Yong Tang · 2008
The study about how to estimate and measure the complexity of traffic flow system is in the ascendant. The application of complexity measure methods in traffic control is becoming a research frontier. In this paper, the simulation tests were used to study the application of complexity measure in traffic control. First, the improved Lempel-Ziv algorithm was introduced to scientifically depict the complexity of a traffic flow system. Then, the follows were validated by simulation: i) whether there is some influence of traffic control on traffic-flow complexity and to what degree the influence is if it exists; ii) the effect of complexity as a control index on the output of traffic control. The concludes are as follows: i) the complexity of a traffic flow is different under different green split, which indicates that the complexity of traffic flow can be changed by traffic control; ii) the information quantity of performance function is enriched by the accession of a new variable, i.e., complexity, which shows that complexity can and should be used in traffic control.