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Reconstruction Quality of Congested Freeway Traffic Patterns from Probe Vehicles Based on Kerner's Three-Phase Traffic Theory

Authors:
Jochen Palmer
Hubert Rehborn

Keywords: Traffic monitoring; Traffic state detection; Traffic data fusion; Three-phase traffic theory; Traffic data quality

Abstract:
This paper discusses the reconstruction quality of spatio-temporal congested freeway traffic patterns depending on the information provided by different equipment rates of probe vehicles. Vehicles in spatio-temporal congested traffic patterns experience a sequence of accelerations and decelerations. To enable vehicles and vehicular assistance applications to react on the traffic conditions, high quality traffic information is required, i.e. a high quality reconstruction of spatio-temporal congested traffic patterns. The paper uses Kerner's three-phase traffic theory which distinguishes two different phases in congested traffic: synchronized flow and wide moving jam. This theory explains empirical traffic breakdown and resulting spatio-temporal congested traffic patterns. In the presented approach spatio-temporal congested traffic patterns are reconstructed from intelligent probe vehicle information generated by an onboard traffic state detection, identifying traffic states along a vehicle's trajectory at any time. With a data fusion algorithm combining the data of several probe vehicles a detailed picture of spatio-temporal congested traffic patterns is revealed. The quality of the reconstructed congested traffic patterns is assessed by introducing quality indices for (i) travel time, (ii) regions of synchronized flow and wide moving jams as well as (iii) fronts of synchronized flow and wide moving jams. The indices are evaluated by examining a congested traffic pattern with varying probe vehicle equipment rates. Comparing ground truth with the reconstructed traffic pattern shows that a reconstruction quality sufficient for some ITS applications is achievable with probe vehicle equipment rates of about 0.50 %.

Pages: 139 to 144

Copyright: Copyright (c) IARIA, 2011

Publication date: January 23, 2011

Published in: conference

ISSN: 2308-4243

ISBN: 978-1-61208-114-4

Location: St. Maarten, The Netherlands Antilles

Dates: from January 23, 2011 to January 28, 2011