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The Impact of Cooperative Adaptive Cruise Control on Traffic-Flow Characteristics

IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems · 2006 · Vol. 7(4) · pp. 429–436

Bart van Arem✉(University of Twente)C.J.G. van Driel(University of Twente)Ruben Visser(University of Twente)

Abstract

Cooperative adaptive cruise control (CACC) is an extension of ACC. In addition to measuring the distance to a predecessor, a vehicle can also exchange information with a predecessor by wireless communication. This enables a vehicle to follow its predecessor at a closer distance under tighter control. This paper focuses on the impact of CACC on traffic-flow characteristics. It uses the traffic-flow simulation model MIXIC that was specially designed to study the impact of intelligent vehicles on traffic flow. The authors study the impacts of CACC for a highway-merging scenario from four to three lanes. The results show an improvement of traffic-flow stability and a slight increase in traffic-flow efficiency compared with the merging scenario without equipped vehicles

Traffic control and management Transportation Planning and Optimization Traffic Prediction and Management TechniquesCooperative Adaptive Cruise ControlTraffic flow (computer networking)Cruise controlIntelligent transportation systemComputer scienceFloating car dataVehicle Information and Communication SystemWirelessTraffic optimizationAdaptive control