Design and evaluation of an adaptive virtual traffic light system for VANETs

In the near future, virtual traffic light systems (VTLS) will contribute to improve the safety of vulnerable road users and the traffic fluidity in the intersections. This work implements and evaluates an adaptive VTLS algorithm, whereby intersections are negotiated dynamically in a safe and balanced way, so that drivers and pedestrians do not experience too long waiting times in the intersections. The proposed adaptive VTLS uses the pull-based communication model. As named data networking (NDN) uses this communication model natively, the adaptive VTLS was implemented using the NDN paradigm. The performance of the adaptive VTLS was compared with a virtual static algorithm, where each signal phase is active for a prefixed time period, and a VTLS algorithm, where pedestrians always have priority over cars at the intersections. Results show that the adaptive VTLS presents better traffic fluidity than the other two algorithms, in spite of consuming more communication channel bandwidth.This work has been supported by FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia within the R&D Units Project Scope: UIDB/00319/202