Performance evaluation of smart cooperative traffic lights in VANETs

Abstract

Vehicular ad hoc network (VANET) is an emerging new type of network, consisting of vehicles as mobile nodes and temporary communication links among these nodes. One of the crucial topics in VANETs is related to how to use traffic lights to optimise vehicle mobility. The traffic lights can work cooperatively to reduce traffic jams by communicating with the vehicles. However, the architecture of smart traffic lights offers challenges related to network latency restrictions and resource constraints. This paper presents a performance evaluation of a cooperative smart traffic light using a stochastic Petri net (SPN) model. The proposed model can calculate the mean response time, resource utilisation, and the number of requests discards. Three case studies are presented to illustrate how useful the model can be. Besides, we conduct real experiments to validate the proposed model by using micro-controllers (Raspberry Pi) that emulate traffic lights. The model is highly flexible, allowing developers and system administrators to calibrate eighteen parameters.