A novel traffic light management mechanism on intersection

Abstract

Currently, most traffic lights at street intersections operate according to a fixed setting. However in reality, vehicle flow rates of each direction are not always equivalent. As a result, the traffic light at the vertical roadway may turn red when no car is driving on the horizontal roadway, or remain in red when all cars on the horizontal roadway have passed the intersection. In this paper, we develop a novel traffic light management to relieve these situations. Besides, at cooperative vehicular safety environment of WAVE/DSRC, each vehicle installs an OBU that periodically broadcasts its current moving status. In addition, our proposed adaptive traffic light management mechanism will collect and analyze the information broadcasted by all OBUs. Hence, the traffic lights are able to dynamic adjust according the current vehicle flow rates of each direction and further reduce the red light waiting time and increase the traffic throughput at the street intersection.