A Feedback Control Method with Connected Vehicles in a Lattice Hydrodynamic Model at Highway On-Ramps

Abstract

This paper presents a traffic flow control scheme of connected vehicles to stabilize a traffic system with on-ramps from a macromodel point of view. Firstly, this paper establishes a lattice hydrodynamic model with on-ramps, and an output feedback controller is designed based on the characteristics of connected vehicles. Then, by using the Lyapunov–Krasovskill functional analysis method, this paper studies the delay-dependent convergence conditions of the control method. String stability is defined as the nonamplification of the downstream disturbance of a traffic flow when it propagates upstream. The influence of the on-ramps is regarded as a stochastic disturbance in this paper. Through a theoretical analysis, the control conditions that can ensure the string stability of the traffic system under the influence of on-ramp are obtained. Finally, numerical experiments are carried out to compare the traffic states of the traffic system with and without control. The results show that the proposed control can effectively suppress the instability of the traffic system.