Two-level hierarchical optimal control for urban traffic networks

Abstract

A two-level hierarchical optimal control method is proposed in this paper. At the upper level, the reference signals (set-point) are optimized with a data-driven model-free adaptive control (MFAC) method. Traffic signals are regulated with the model predictive control (MPC) with the desired reference signals specified by the upper level. The main contribution is that the set-point optimization is addressed by using the MFAC method which does not need modeling of the traffic system dynamics. Moreover, through this scheme, the planning of vehicle distribution in a road network and the operation of traffic signal control can be executed simultaneously. The effectiveness of the proposed method is testified by an urban traffic network based on MATLAB and VISSIM 9.0 and is also demonstrated by the comparison results with the back-pressure traffic signal control and traditional MPC.

Keywords:

• Urban traffic network
• set-point optimization
• model-free adaptive control
• model predictive control

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) [grant numbers 61433002 and 61833001].