Smart Cities Trafic Light Management Systems Review: Models and Approaches

Abstract

Abstract In large cities, the number of vehicles in daily circulation is increasing significantly. In parallel with the evolution of urban structures, the road infrastructure is struggling to keep up with this flow of vehicles. Such a situation could become more and more cumbersome until it leads to unmanageable conditions that could reach complete congestion of the crossroads. Thus, due to its negative impact on the daily lives of vehicle users, many studies have addressed this problem, but the issue is still relevant today and is attracting more attention from researchers, especially with the emerging paradigm of smart cities. To this end, different approaches have been developed to overcome the waiting time hindrance at road junctions and avoid the costly and stressful situation of trafic congestion. In this context, the significant studies conducted so far are analyzed in this paper in order to synthesize the different approaches used. The objective is to highlight the important elements of a successful solution for trafic signal planning at intersections. Such a solution must be consistent with the requirements and environment of the smart city concept. Thus, different solutions to the problem posed, in the form of Smart Trafic Light Management Systems (STLMS), have been based on models applied to one or more intersections and using mathematical optimization techniques, wireless sensor networks, or both. Nevertheless, none of the proposed methods has addressed the problem as a whole, i.e., the coordination and cooperation of STLMS at all intersections of a smart city and the integration of the overall system into the IoT environment.