Location of turning ratio and flow sensors for flow reconstruction in large traffic networks

Abstract

In this work we examine the problem of minimizing the number of sensors needed to completely recover the vehicular flow in a steady state traffic network. We consider two possible sensor technologies: one that allows the measurement of turning ratios at a given intersection and the other that directly measures the flow in a road. We formulate an optimization problem that finds the optimal location of both types of sensors, such that a minimum number is required. To solve this problem, we propose a method that relies on the structure of the underlying graph, which has a quasi-linear computational complexity, resulting in less computing time when compared to other works in the literature. We evaluate our results using dynamical traffic simulations in synthetic networks.