Transportation Research Part C 104 (2019) 390–407

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Transportation Research Part C

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/trc

Traffic signal control by leveraging Cooperative Adaptive Cruise

T
Control (CACC) vehicle platooning capabilities
Hao Liu , Xiao-Yun Lu, Steven E. Shladover
⁎

Partners for Advanced Transportation Technology (PATH), Institute of Transportation Studies, University of California, Berkeley, Richmond Field
Station Building 452, 1357 S. 46th Street, Richmond, CA 94804, USA

ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT

Keywords: Vehicles equipped with Cooperative Adaptive Cruise Control (CACC) have the capability to
Cooperative Adaptive Cruise Control (CACC) broadcast their real-time speed and location information via wireless communications. They can
Cooperative signal control algorithm also safely operate in multi-vehicle strings while keeping shorter than normal gaps among ad-
Intersection throughput jacent vehicles in the high-speed traffic stream. Such capabilities can greatly benefit the man-
Vehicle fuel consumption
agement of urban signalized intersections. In this study, we have developed a cooperative signal
CACC string operation
control algorithm that adopts the CACC datasets and the datasets collected by the traditional
fixed traffic sensors to predict the future traffic conditions. The prediction allows the signal
controller to assign signal priority to the intersection approach that accommodates the most
CACC strings. Such a control strategy can significantly enhance the CACC string operation, which
ultimately improves the overall intersection performance. The effectiveness of the algorithm has
been tested in a simulated 4-way signalized intersection. The algorithm substantially outperforms
the traditional actuated controller as it perceives the traffic flow more comprehensively and
assigns the green time resource more efficiently than the traditional controller. Particularly, the
average vehicle speed and the average vehicle miles travelled per gallon fuel consumed (MPG)
can be increased by more than 10% when the CACC market penetration is 100%. In mixed traffic
where CACC fleets frequently interact with manually driven vehicles, the algorithm is found to be
more beneficial. The speed and MPG improvement exceed 30% when the CACC market pene-
tration is 40%. The signal control algorithm can bring about significant benefit even when the
CACC market penetration is 0%. In this case, it completely relies on the datasets obtained from
the traditional traffic sensors. This finding demonstrates the robustness of the algorithm. It makes
the proposed algorithm suitable to implement in real-world intersections under various CACC
market penetrations and different levels of vehicle connectivity.

1. Introduction

Adaptive Cruise Control (ACC) is a vehicle automation system that aims to maintain a safe distance between a subject vehicle and
its preceding vehicle during the car following process. The system reaches the control objective by adjusting the subject vehicle’s
speed dynamically based on the speed variations of its preceding vehicle. ACC relies on the on-board speed and range sensors to
measure the information needed by the speed controller. It does not have the capability to perceive and interpolate the behaviors of
downstream vehicles that are occluded by the preceding vehicle. For this reason, the ACC system is often found to generate excessive
acceleration and deceleration behaviors because it cannot anticipate the downstream traffic status. This would greatly decrease the

⁎
Corresponding author.
E-mail address: liuhao@berkeley.edu (H. Liu).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.trc.2019.05.027
Received 4 January 2019; Received in revised form 21 May 2019; Accepted 22 May 2019
Available online 26 May 2019
0968-090X/ © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
H. Liu, et al. Transportation Research Part C 104 (2019) 390–407

stability of the overall traffic flow (Shladover et al., 2012). The shortcoming of ACC has inspired the development of Cooperative ACC
(CACC), which uses Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) wireless communications to obtain the information from multiple preceding vehicles.
The communication capability enables a CACC vehicle to react almost immediately to speed changes of multiple forward CACC
vehicles. This allows the CACC vehicles to safely operate in multi-vehicle strings while keeping shorter than normal gaps among
adjacent vehicles in the high-speed traffic stream (Shladover et al., 2015). Previous studies show that the freeway pipeline capacity
increases quadratically with the CACC market penetration. The capacity can be raised by more than 90% when the market pene-
tration is 100% (Liu et al., 2018a). In mixed traffic, the effectiveness of CACC is also great, but could be largely affected by string
operation factors such as the probability for the randomly scattered CACC vehicles to form strings, the average string length, and the
percentage of time in the CACC state versus non-CACC state (Liu et al., 2018b). To facilitate the operation of CACC in freeways, traffic
management strategies such as CACC vehicle managed lane and CACC vehicle merging assistance are introduced to enable the string
formation and uninterrupted string operations (Liu et al., 2018b).
The CACC vehicle string operation may also bring about substantial improvement of the arterial network performance (Lioris
et al., 2017). The major challenge is that the arterial network cannot accommodate an uninterrupted traffic flow as the freeway
facility does. The traffic control devices adopted at arterial intersections might frequently break the CACC strings, thus reducing the
benefits introduced by the string operation. One possible way to address the challenge is to apply dedicated green phases to CACC
strings. In this case, the signal priority schemes traditionally used for transit buses and emergency vehicles can be adapted for
managing CACC vehicles. However, the implementation of such a scheme to CACC vehicles results in the reduction of green time for
the manually driven vehicle fleets. When the CACC market penetration is low, the benefits gained by this strategy can be easily offset
by the performance loss of manually driven vehicles. In addition, multiple CACC strings could approach an intersection from
competing directions at the same time. It then becomes difficult for the controller to determine the priority for those competing CACC
vehicle strings. Alternatively, the signal controller can take advantage of the rich traffic information as the CACC vehicles con-
tinuously broadcast their real-time speed, acceleration and location via the wireless communications. With this information, the
controller can give higher signal priority to the intersection approach with more CACC vehicle strings, thus allowing that approach to
operate under a high traffic flow rate until all queued vehicles are discharged. Since the controller can update the signal phase and
timing (SPaT) plan at short intervals, it can quickly respond to traffic flow variations and always apply the signal priority to the
intersection approach that accommodates the most CACC vehicle strings. Because the intersection approaches that receive the signal
priority can operate with much increased efficiency, they will save green time resources in the long run. The saved green times can be
allocated to approaches with low signal priority, leading to an overall performance increase of the intersection. With this intersection
control concept, the CACC vehicles no longer compete with the manually driven vehicles for the green time resources. Instead, they
serve as actuators for better intersection management.
The above discussion has motivated us to develop a cooperative signal control algorithm that aims to maximize the intersection
throughput by leveraging the CACC capabilities. The major advantage of the algorithm is that it perceives the real-time traffic
condition based on the inputs from both the CACC vehicles and fixed traffic sensors (e.g., loop detectors and radar sensors). Such an
advanced traffic status perception allows it to predict the future movements of the CACC vehicles and manually driven vehicles. The
predicted information is the basis for the algorithm to compute the optimal SPaT plans that enable the throughput maximization.
Because the traditional traffic data sources are used to supplement the datasets provided by the CACC vehicles, the algorithm can be
implemented at low CACC market penetration scenarios in case the intersection controller cannot gather sufficient traffic information
from CACC vehicles. In addition, the algorithm recognizes that vehicles in CACC strings can discharge from the queue more quickly
than other vehicles. It thus avoids assigning an equal green time to the CACC vehicle and the manually driven vehicle. This leads to a
further improved utilization of the green time resource. Moreover, the algorithm is designed to be implemented in the National
Electrical Manufacturers Association (NEMA) 8-phase controllers. This makes the algorithm readily applicable at numerous real-
world intersections.

2. Literature review

Improving the intersection operation via CAV technologies has increasingly attracted attention. Researchers have developed
algorithms to specify the optimal trajectories for individual CAVs based on their arrival and departure times. This control scheme
helps the CAVs avoid stopping at the intersection and/or obtain an optimized vehicle energy consumption profile. Particularly,
studies in (Dresner and Stone, 2008; Fajardo et al., 2011; Lee and Park, 2012; Zohdy and Rakha, 2016; Ma et al., 2017; Wu et al.,
2019; Li et al., 2019; Mirheli et al., 2019) developed signal-free control strategies that took advantage of the fully connected and
automated environment. The outputs of those strategies were tailored arrival and departure sequence, and detailed speed profiles for
each CAV that about to enter the intersection area. With such an intersection management, CAVs from competing movements could
enter and leave the intersection continuously. The algorithms also allowed multiple vehicles to enter the intersection simultaneously
if their movements did not conflict with each other. As a result, the time losses due to the phase transition of the traditional signal
controllers could be eliminated and the intersection capacity would raise significantly. While those algorithms could only be adopted
in situations with 100% market penetration of vehicles driven under fully automatic control (and assuming faultless operation of
those vehicles and no interference from pedestrians or bicyclists), there were also algorithms designed to enhance the performance of
intersections operating in mixed traffic (He et al., 2015; Altan et al., 2017; Jiang et al., 2017; Sun et al., 2018). In those studies,
traditional traffic signals were kept to guide the manually driven vehicles. At the same time, the intersection controller offered CAVs
optimized speed profiles that were determined based on the SPaT information and the real-time traffic conditions. The speed profiles
enabled the vehicles to pass the intersection with increased average speed and mild deceleration and acceleration cycles. This would

391
H. Liu, et al. Transportation Research Part C 104 (2019) 390–407

bring about fuel and/or travel time savings for the subject vehicles, and overall improvement of the intersection performance. The
major challenge of implementing those algorithms lies in the difficulty of accurately predicting the traffic conditions within the
control horizon. If the predicted traffic condition is inconsistent with the real one, the recommended speed profiles may not lead to
the optimal intersection performance, or may even decrease the stability of the traffic flow. For this reason, those algorithms will
become less effective at intersections where complex turning movements, frequent vehicle lane changes, pedestrian calls and un-
expected human driver behavior make accurate traffic condition prediction difficult or infeasible.
Another branch of intersection management method adjusts the SPaT plans dynamically based on the real-time connected vehicle
information (Li et al., 2014; Feng et al., 2015; Lee et al., 2015; Ramezani and Geroliminis, 2015; Tiaprasert et al., 2015; Yang et al.,
2016; Al Islam and Hajbabaie, 2017; Aziz et al., 2018). Those algorithms rely on the anticipated arrival and departure times and
sequences of the CAVs to compute an optimal signal plan with the objective of maximizing the intersection throughput, and/or
minimizing the delay or fuel consumption. In mixed traffic where the manually driven vehicles cannot send their operation status to
the intersection controller, the algorithms often use the CAV information and the measurements from traditional traffic monitoring
devices to estimate the arrival and departure times for the manually driven vehicles. Since this approach still applies the traditional
traffic signal to execute the control command, it should be easy to implement at existing intersections. Moreover, studies in (Feng
et al., 2018; Xu et al., 2018; Guo et al., 2019) aimed to integrate the signal control optimization and vehicle trajectory planning into
the same framework. With the combined method, the planned trajectories become inputs to the signal control algorithm. As the signal
controller no longer needs to address the uncertainty regarding the future movements of the target vehicles, it is expected to deliver
optimized performance at both the intersection level and individual vehicle level. Nonetheless, those algorithms can only reach the
anticipated performance under either a highly automated environment where most vehicles can strictly follow the planned trajec-
tories or intersections with low demand and simple movements (e.g., without turning movements). In complicated traffic conditions,
those approaches suffer from the same challenges associated with the trajectory planning algorithms.
The algorithm developed in this study aims to optimize the traffic signal control under the CACC environment. The signal
optimization functions used by existing researches are not suitable for this purpose because they consider individual vehicles as
separate entities in the optimization problem while vehicles in CACC strings update their speeds and adjust their gaps collectively.
Such a CACC car-following behavior makes the arrival and departure patterns of CACC vehicles different from the rest of the traffic.
Failure to recognize such a difference will make the resulting SPaT plans unlikely to facilitate the optimal operation for intersections
that accommodate CACC vehicle strings. This inspires us to develop a cooperative signal control algorithm that can facilitate CACC
vehicle string operation.
The remainder of the paper is organized as follows. The next section gives a detailed description of the proposed signal control
algorithm. Section 4 presents the simulation models that depict the behaviors of CACC vehicles and manually driven vehicles. The
following section describes the impacts of the presented algorithm on the intersection mobility performance and the vehicle fuel
consumption under various CACC market penetrations in a four-way intersection site. The last section provides concluding remarks
about the research.

3. Cooperative signal control algorithm

3.1. Intersection throughput optimization

The objective of the proposed cooperative signal control algorithm is to determine proper green times for the eight-phase signal
controller (Fig. 1) such that the resulting SPaT scheme maximizes the overall throughput of the intersection. We preferred to
maximize the throughput instead of minimizing the overall delay or energy consumption because the optimization problem could be
largely simplified. For example, the delay or vehicle energy consumption minimization requires the prediction of vehicle trajectories
in the control horizon. Such a prediction demands an accurate measurement of vehicles’ real-time speed and location and the iterative
application of the detailed car following and lane changing rules that describe the vehicle movements in the future. This task needs a
comprehensive sensor network to collect the required traffic data and a powerful computer to search for the optimal solution. It is
difficult to perform such an optimization in real-time for intersections with partially connected fleets. On the other hand, the
throughput maximization depends on the estimation of the number of vehicles that can pass the intersection in the control horizon
(e.g., next cycle length). It only needs to determine if the vehicles will stop in the queue and how the queue discharges during the

Fig. 1. Phasing of the traffic signal controller.

392
H. Liu, et al. Transportation Research Part C 104 (2019) 390–407

green phase. This computation process can be completed using the simple kinematic theory and traffic wave theories based on the
information from a few probe vehicles in the traffic stream. For the above reasons, maximizing the throughput is considered to be a
suitable control strategy that can be deployed for traffic streams composed of both CACC and manually driven vehicles.
The objective function of the proposed algorithm is given as the following:
N
M
Max ij
i=1
j =1 (1)
where M is the number of intersection approaches; N is the number of vehicles in an approach (e.g., road segment R meters upstream
from the intersection, where R is the communication range); i and j is the approach ID and vehicle ID in an approach, respectively;
and ij = 1, if vehicle j of approach i can pass the intersection at the end of the next signal cycle and ij = 0 , otherwise. The presented
objective function is equivalent to the minimization of the sum of the queue length of all intersection approaches because
Queue = N + Qin Qout (2)
where Qin and Qout are the input and output traffic flow, respectively. N and Qin describe the intersection state that cannot be changed
by the signal control. Among the three parameters in Eq. (2), only Qout can be affected by the signal control algorithm. The remaining
two parameters are system factors that are affected by the input traffic demands. When the proposed the signal control algorithm
optimizes the intersection throughput, it essentially maximizes the number of vehicles leaving the intersection in the next cycle,
which leads to the minimization of the total queue length at the end of the cycle length.
The objective function in Eq. (1) is optimized via identifying the optimal green time distribution for all the intersection ap-
proaches. If two intersection approaches have the same queue length but one approach accommodates more CACC vehicles than the
other, the first approach will achieve a higher throughput rate than the latter if the same green time is given to both approaches. For
this reason, the algorithm will favor the first approach when allocating the green time resource. Ultimately, the intersection approach
with the most queued vehicles and highest local CACC market penetration will have the longest green time.
Since the cooperative signal control will be implemented in the 8-phase traffic controller, we have considered the following
constraints regarding the signal phase and timing:
4
(gl + tYR ) = C (3)
l=1

8
(gl + tYR ) = C (4)
l=5

2 6
(gl + tYR ) = (gl + tYR ) (5)
l=1 l=5

4 8
(gl + tYR ) = (gl + tYR ) (6)
l=3 l=7

where g is the green time; tYR is the yellow and all red time; C is the cycle length; and l is the phase ID. Eqs. (3) and (4) represent the
cycle length constraint. Eqs. (5) and (6) state that the total green time of the two rings in each stage should be the same.
In addition, we apply constraints that describe the vehicle movement in the next signal cycle. Particularly, if a subject vehicle can
keep the cruising speed in the next signal cycle, the movement constraint is depicted by Eq. (7). The method for identifying if the
vehicle can maintain the cruising status is given in Section 3.2 Vehicle Travel Distance Prediction.

1 Dcruise > d 0
ij =
0 otherwise (7)

Dcruise = v0·(tr t0 ) (8)

where Dcruise is the cruising distance the subject vehicle can travel before the start of the next red phase (see notations on the dashed
line in Fig. 2); d 0 is the vehicle’s distance from the intersection at the beginning of a signal cycle; v0 is the vehicle speed at the
beginning of a signal cycle; tr is the start time of the next red phase; and t 0 is the beginning time of a cycle.

Fig. 2. Time distance diagram for an intersection movement.

393
H. Liu, et al. Transportation Research Part C 104 (2019) 390–407

Fig. 3. Comparison of the proposed algorithm and actuated control.

If a subject vehicle needs to stop in a queue in the next signal cycle (again, the method for determining the stopping status is given
in Section 3.2 Vehicle Travel Distance Prediction), the constraint in Eq. (9) is applied:

1 Dacc > Lqueue

ij =
0 otherwise (9)

2
0.5· aij ·geff tacc < geff
Dacc = 2
0.5· aij ·tacc + vfree·(geff tacc ) otherwise (10)

where Dacc is the distance the subject vehicle can travel after it leaves the queue (see the notations on the black solid line in Fig. 2);
Lqueue is queue length; aij is the anticipatory acceleration the vehicle will use as it accelerates to the free flow speed; tacc is the time
needed to accelerate to the free flow speed; vfree is the free flow speed; and geff is the effective green time for the vehicle. The effective
green time is the green period between when the subject vehicle starts accelerating and the signal turns red. It equals the total green
time minus the time needed for the acceleration wave to propagate to the subject vehicle.
The proposed algorithm improves the intersection operation by assigning green time more efficiently than the actuated signal
control. As Fig. 3 shows, vehicle A from the westbound approach would trigger green time extensions if the actuated traffic controller
is used. The extended green time only allows a few vehicles in the dashed box to pass the intersection. On the other hand, our
algorithm reallocates the green time such that the extended green time is given to a different approach where several CACC strings
are coming. The resulting green time split allows vehicles in those CACC strings to pass the intersection without waiting for another
green cycle, thus leading to improved intersection throughput. The proposed algorithm is expected to work best under congested
traffic conditions. Under light traffic where the green time assigned to each phase is more than enough to discharge the queue, we
need to first optimize the cycle length to avoid wasting the green time, and then apply the proposed algorithm to generate optimal
green time splits. Since the cycle length optimization is not included in our current algorithm, it may not ensure the optimal operation
of an intersection in light traffic. Under congested traffic, on the other hand, the proposed algorithm gives priority to intersection
approaches that can sustain the maximum output flow for a longer time than the other approaches. The prioritized approaches can
output high flow rate because they usually have more CACC strings in the queue than the remaining approaches. In the meantime, if
an approach only has a short queue and low input flow, the algorithm will only assign a small green time to it until the queued CACC
vehicles accumulates in later cycles. Because of the proposed signal control, the intersection as a system can always operate under
high output flow conditions, leading to an improved overall performance of the intersection.

3.2. Vehicle travel distance prediction

The implementation of the proposed algorithm requires an estimation of the distance a subject vehicle can travel in the next signal
cycle. The travel distance is used to determine if the subject vehicle can pass the intersection before the cycle ends. If the vehicle can
pass, it will be counted in the objective function in Eq. (1). To calculate the distance, we need to first determine if the subject vehicle
can keep cruising or needs to stop in the queue in the next cycle. The subject vehicle can keep cruising if it does not join the end of the
preceding queue when the effective green starts (i.e., see the condition in Eqs. (11)–(14)). Otherwise, the vehicle will stop in the
queue in the next cycle. The travel distances for the cruising vehicles and stopping vehicles are calculated using Eqs. (8) and (10),

394
H. Liu, et al. Transportation Research Part C 104 (2019) 390–407

respectively.
Lqueue + Dbuffer < Deff (11)

Lqueue = (l¯ + djam )· Npre (12)

v02
Dbuffer =
2bcomfort (13)

Deff = d 0 v0·(teff t0) (14)

where l¯ is the average vehicle length; djam is the jam gap; Npre is the number of vehicles preceding the subject vehicle; bcomfort is the
comfortable deceleration; v0 is the cruising speed obtained at the beginning of the signal cycle; Dbuffer is the distance needed by the
subject vehicle to fully stop from the cruising speed; Deff is the distance between the subject vehicle and the intersection after the
subject vehicle keeps cruising with v0 until the effective green starts (see notations on the dashed line in Fig. 2); and teff is the start of
the effective green time, which can be estimated by using the traffic wave theory:
Nmanual
teff = tg + +
Uwave (15)

1
Uwave =
¯ (16)

where tg is the start time of the next green phase; Nmanual is the number of preceding manually driven vehicles in the queue; Uwave is the
propagation speed of the acceleration wave in number of vehicles per second; ¯ is the average reaction time of the preceding manual
drivers; and is the reaction time of the subject driver.
To model the different behaviors of the CACC vehicles and manually driven vehicles, we use different reaction time and an-
ticipatory acceleration for the two vehicle classes:

stop for stopped manual vehicles

= moving for moving manual vehicles
0 for CACC vehicles (17)

amanual for manual vehicles

aij =
aCACC for CACC vehicles (18)

With the above considerations, we can capture the discharging of the queue with various concentrations of CACC vehicles. In
addition, if the subject vehicle is a CACC vehicle and is at the head of a queue, the driver of the CACC vehicle will start accelerating
manually and then turn on CACC. The motion is initiated manually instead of automatically because the CACC controller cannot
check if there is a pedestrian crossing in front of the subject vehicle or a vehicle running the red light on the cross-street. It is not safe
to let the CACC controller start the acceleration. In this case, the subject vehicle will start after a human driver reaction time of stop
and then accelerate with an anticipatory acceleration aCACC . The vehicle will cruise at vfree after reaching the maximum speed.
We have adopted a deterministic kinematic model for predicting the travel distance. The application of the method inevitably
introduces prediction errors. As shown in Eqs. (11)–(18), the errors are caused because a constant driver reaction time and accel-
eration rate are used instead of stochastic ones. The variation of the reaction time is usually within 0.5 s (Liu et al., 2017). For an
arterial segment with an average speed of 10 m/s, failing to take into account the variation can result in a ± 5 m error in the travel
distance estimation. The error is about the length of a typical passenger car. It could make the algorithm generate incorrect pre-
dictions for 1 or 2 vehicles that happen to be within 5 m of the stop bar at the end of the next signal cycle. For major intersections that
serves more than one hundred vehicles per cycle, we think such an error is acceptable. The variation of the average acceleration rate
is usually less than 0.5 m/s2. To roughly estimate the errors, let’s consider an intersection approach with 10 m/s average speed and
2 m/s2 average vehicle acceleration. If the constant acceleration is used and there is no delay in all vehicle start-ups, a 100-meter
queue would require 10 s green time to discharge (e.g., 100 = 0.5·2 m/s2·(10 s) 2 ). When the acceleration variation is counted, the
time needed to discharge the same queue could range between 8.9 s to 11.5 s. This introduces about 10% error that might be reduced
by advanced methods such as Monte Carlo simulation. However, the use of the advanced methods will substantially increase the
computation burden of the algorithm, making it difficult to apply the algorithm at real-world intersections.

3.3. Manually driven vehicles’ speed and location estimation

The above estimation of the vehicle travel distance needs a subject vehicle’s speed (i.e., v0 ) and location (i.e., d 0 ) as the inputs.
Those inputs for the CACC vehicles can be directly obtained via the V2I communication. The speed and location of the manually
driven vehicles are determined based on the CACC datasets and the vehicle speed and count data collected by the fixed traffic sensors
(e.g., loop detectors, radar sensors, and video cameras). We assume that the speed and location of the first and the last vehicle in an
intersection approach are known, whether those vehicles are connected or not. The information of the first vehicle can be provided by
the fixed traffic sensors at the concerned intersection. The speed and location of the last vehicle can be computed based on the

395
H. Liu, et al. Transportation Research Part C 104 (2019) 390–407

Fig. 4. Case 1 of the speed and location estimation.

measurements of the departure sensors installed at the intersection upstream from the concerned one:

v0last = vmeasure (19)

d0last = dsensor vmeasure·(t 0 tmeasure ) (20)

where vmeasure is the measured speed when the last vehicle passes the upstream sensor; dsensor is the distance between the upstream
sensor and the concerned intersection; and tmeasure is the timestamp when the last vehicle passes the upstream sensor. In Eqs. (19) and
(20), we assume that the last vehicle will maintain a constant speed after it passes the upstream sensor until the signal cycle of the
concerned intersection begins. This is a reasonable assumption because the last vehicle of an intersection approach usually just leaves
the upstream intersection. It can travel at the free flow speed for the most cases. This assumption becomes invalid for oversaturated
intersections where the queue can spill back to the upstream intersection.
With the fixed traffic sensors, we can also obtain the number of manually driven vehicles between two consecutive CACC vehicles.
The manually driven vehicle count can be collected by the upstream traffic sensor during the time interval between when the first and
the second CACC vehicle leave the sensor location.
Now we know the position and speed of an upstream CACC vehicle and a downstream CACC vehicle and the number of manually
driven vehicles between them. (The upstream or downstream vehicle might be a manually driven vehicle if it is the first or last vehicle
in an intersection approach.) The speed and location of vehicles between the two CACC vehicles can be estimated in four cases.
Case 1. Both the upstream and downstream CACC vehicles are moving (Fig. 4). To simplify the position and speed estimation, we
assume all manually driven vehicles between the two vehicles are moving as well. Those manually driven vehicles are anticipated to
keep the same headway from the preceding vehicles. Their speed is estimated by using the linear interpolation.
V1 V0
vk = V0 + · k· h¯
HW (21)
k
xk = X 0 + vp·h¯
p=1 (22)

HW
h¯ =
Nm + 1 (23)

where k is the number of the manually driven vehicle; vk and xk are the speed and location of vehicle k , respectively; V1 (V0 ) and X0
( X1) are the speed and location of the downstream (upstream) CACC vehicle, respectively; HW is the headway between the upstream
and downstream CACC vehicle; h̄ is the average headway of the manually driven vehicles between the two CACC vehicles; Nm is the
number of the manually driven vehicles between the two CACC vehicles.
Case 2. Both the upstream and downstream CACC vehicles stop (Fig. 5). In this case, we assume all manually driven vehicles between
them also stop. Each of them keeps a jam gap from the preceding vehicle. The locations of the manually driven vehicles are given as:
xk = X 0 + k·(l¯ + djam ) (24)

Fig. 5. Case 2 of the speed and location estimation.

396
H. Liu, et al. Transportation Research Part C 104 (2019) 390–407

Fig. 6. Case 3 of the speed and location estimation.

D (Nm + 1)·l¯
djam =
Nm + 1 (25)

where D is the distance between the front bumpers of the upstream and downstream CACC vehicles.
Case 3. The downstream CACC vehicle stops and the upstream CACC vehicle is moving (Fig. 6). This case occurs when the
downstream CACC vehicle has stopped in a queue and the upstream CACC vehicle is about to join the queue. For this case, we need to
identify the number of manually driven vehicles that also stop in the queue after the downstream CACC vehicle. The speed and
location of those vehicles will be determined using the method described in Case 2. The method in Case 1 will be used for depicting
the information about the rest of the manually driven vehicles. The number of the queued vehicles n queue is calculated with the
following statistic function:
Nm
nqueue = n·(1 p)n 1· p (26)
n= 1

where p is the CACC market penetration. Eq. (26) sums up the product of the queue length n and the probability that the queue is n
vehicles. For example, if the downstream CACC vehicle is the last vehicle of the queue (i.e., nqueue = 0 ), the probability of the event is
p . If the downstream CACC vehicle is the second last vehicle of the queue (i.e., nqueue = 1), the probability is (1 p)· p . The same
consideration is applied to possible cases until the queue length reaches Nm . As a result, this equation depicts the expected number of
manually driven vehicles that may exist in the queue after a stopped CACC vehicle. Once the queued manually driven vehicles are
identified, the speed and location of the manually driven vehicles can be computed as:

0 if vehicle k is in the queue

vk = V1
HW
·(k nqueue )·h¯ otherwise (27)

X 0 + k·(l¯ + djam ) if vehicle k is in the queue

xk = k
X0 + D + v · h¯ otherwise
p = nqueue + 1 p (28)

(X X0) D 1
h¯ = 1 ·
0.5V1 Nm nqueue + 1 (29)

HW = (Nm nqueue + 1)·h¯ (30)

D = nqueue ·(l¯ + djam) (31)

where D is defined in Fig. 6.
Case 4. The downstream CACC vehicle is moving and the upstream CACC vehicle stops (Fig. 7). This case occurs when the
downstream CACC vehicle has started leaving the queue, while the upstream vehicle is still stopped in the queue. For this case, we
need to identify the manually driven vehicles that also have started moving after the downstream CACC vehicle. The shockwave

Fig. 7. Case 4 of the speed and location estimation.

397
H. Liu, et al. Transportation Research Part C 104 (2019) 390–407

theory is used to determine the number of the moving vehicles nmoving :

nmoving = Uwave·(t 0 tstart ) (32)
where tstart is the time the downstream CACC vehicle starts accelerating. It can be obtained via the V2I communication. The speed and
location of the moving manually driven vehicles are estimated using Eqs. (21) through (23) described in Case 1. The remaining
manually driven vehicles are still idling in the queue. Their information can be calculated by using the method introduced in Case 2.
0 if vehicle k is in the queue
vk = V0
V0 HW
·k· h¯ otherwise (33)
nmoving
X0 + p=1
vp· h¯ + (k nmoving )·(l¯ + djam) if vehicle k is in the queue
xk = k
X0 + v ·h¯ otherwise
p=1 p (34)

(X X0) D 1
h¯ = 1 ·
0.5V0 nmoving + 1 (35)

HW = (nmoving + 1)· h¯ (36)

D = (Nm nmoving + 1)·(l¯ + djam) (37)

3.4. Algorithm implementation

The proposed cooperative signal control algorithm is executed at the beginning of each signal cycle to update the SPaT plan of a
concerned intersection. To this end, the algorithm iteratively examines possible green time splits among the eight phases until it
identifies a green distribution that results in the maximum throughput. If a zero green time is assigned to a phase, it means that the
phase is skipped. At each iteration step, the controller first collects the speed, location, and CACC string status of every CACC vehicle
within a communication range R of the intersection. It also obtains the vehicle speed and count data from the fixed traffic sensors
located at the concerned intersection and the upstream intersections. Then it determines the location and speed of the manually
driven vehicles using the method described in Section 3.4. With the measured and estimated datasets, the algorithm further estimates
the distance each vehicle travels in the next signal cycle. The predicted travel distance data are used to identify the number of
vehicles that can pass the intersection.
A heuristic method is adopted to enable the real-time application of the proposed control algorithm because we intend to im-
plement the cooperative signal control algorithm in our future hardware-in-the-loop experiments where the performance of a real-
world intersection is explored under various simulated traffic conditions. The signal control system of the test intersection uses 2070
signal controller, which offers limited computation capability. The proposed algorithm is designed that it can provide optimal green
time splits even under saturated traffic flow at the test intersection. To further increase the execution speed, the algorithm only
considers integer numbers when searching for optimal green times. And the optimal solution search would stop immediately as the
objective function starts to decline. Those considerations are very useful when the proposed algorithm needs to be deployed at
intersections that utilize legacy control hardware. The flow chart of the algorithm is shown in Fig. 8.

4. Simulating vehicle car following and lane changing behaviors

The proposed signal control algorithm has been tested in a simulation environment. The vehicle car following and lane changing
behaviors in the simulation are depicted by the PATH microscopic traffic flow model. That model is able to capture the interactions
among CACC vehicles and manually driven vehicles, as well as the overall impacts of the CACC string operation on the traffic flow.
The traffic models consist of the NGSIM oversaturated flow human driver model reported in (Yeo et al., 2008) and the ACC/CACC car
following model developed based on a real-world CACC field test (Milanés and Shladover, 2014; Lu et al., 2017). The human driver
model was calibrated using field data collected from an 18-kilometer freeway corridor (Oh and Yeo, 2012; Lu et al, 2017) and its
modeling capability was cross-validated with the MOTUS model (Kan et al., 2018). The ACC/CACC model has been derived from the
trajectory data obtained from tests on a real-world CACC string (Milanés et al., 2014). The traffic models provided a solid foundation
for modeling the car following and lane changing behavior in mixed traffic with the CACC operation strategies.
The PATH model was originally developed for simulating freeway traffic. To analyze the impacts of CACC on arterials, we have
added new modeling components to depict arterial drivers’ behaviors. The major difference between freeway driving and arterial
driving is that the arterial drivers need to deal with the turning conflicts within intersections. In a turning scenario, the drivers will
react to both the traffic signal and the preceding vehicle. They also need to avoid the collision with vehicles from conflicting turns.
Moreover, drivers stopped at the red signal will have start-up lost times as they leave the intersection after the signal turns green. We
have developed a model component to examine the distance between a modeled vehicle and the yellow signal. If the vehicle can stop
using a maximum acceptable deceleration rate before the yellow time ends, the vehicle will continue driving to pass the intersection.
Otherwise, the vehicle will treat the yellow signal as a preceding idling car. It will gradually decelerate and stop in front of the signal.
Similarly, the red signal is also modeled as an idling vehicle that the modeled vehicle needs to respond to. The new modeling

398
H. Liu, et al. Transportation Research Part C 104 (2019) 390–407

Fig. 8. Iteration steps of the proposed signal control algorithm.

component also makes a subject vehicle avoid colliding with other vehicles in the intersection. To this end, the algorithm first
computes the conflict point based on the speed, acceleration, and location of the subject vehicle and vehicles that may have conflicts
with the subject vehicle. Afterwards, it examines the time window the subject vehicle has to pass the conflict point. If the time
window is less than a safety threshold (e.g., 5 s in the study), the modeled vehicle will slow down until it identifies a safe time
window. The start-up lost time is modeled such that the start-up reaction time of the first queued vehicle will increase to 2 s (TRB,
2010). The reaction time drops linearly from the first queued vehicle to the 5th queued vehicles. The start-up reaction time of the 5th
queued vehicle is assumed to be equal with the normal reaction time (e.g., 1.0 s in this study).

5. Effects of the cooperative signal control algorithm

In this section, we present the effects of the proposed signal control algorithm on traffic flow mobility and vehicle fuel con-
sumption. The algorithm has been evaluated in a simulated arterial network that consists of a four-way intersection (Fig. 9). The
southbound and northbound approaches are major approaches with two through lanes and a dedicated left turn lane. The westbound
and eastbound approaches are minor approaches with one through and right turn lane and one left turn lane. The major approach has
a traffic demand of 95% through movement and 5% left turn movement. The traffic volume of the minor approach contains 45% left
turn demand, 45% right turn demand, and 10% through demand.
The baseline simulation has been performed under 0% CACC case. The baseline scenario adopts the actuated signal controller.
The parameters of the actuated controller, including the minimum green, max green, green extension, and yellow and all red time,
are shown in Fig. 9. Those parameters are determined based on the methods described in the Highway Capacity Manual (TRB, 2010)
and Traffic Engineering 4th Edition (Roess et al., 2010). Particularly, the cycle length of the actuated control is determined using the
following equation:
N ·tL
C=
VC
1 (3600 / h )·PHF ·(v / c ) (38)

where C is the cycle length (s); N is the number of phases in a ring (i.e., 4); tL is the lost time per phase (e.g., 3.5 s); VC is the critical
lane volume (e.g., 1000 veh/h); h is the saturation headway (e.g., 2.2 s); PHF is the peak hour factor (e.g., 0.9); v /c is the volume
capacity ratio (e.g., 0.8). Once the cycle length is determined, the green time is assigned to each phase in proportion to the traffic
flow. The assigned green time is set as the maximum green time of each phase. The minimum green time is 0 s, which allows the
controller to skip a phase when there is no vehicle detected. The ‘gap out’ rule is used by the controller to terminate a phase. The
green time extension is 1.5 s in this study.

399
H. Liu, et al. Transportation Research Part C 104 (2019) 390–407

Fig. 9. Simulated intersection and actuated control parameters.

In addition to the baseline simulation, we also conducted analyses for scenarios of 20%, 40%, 60%, 80% and 100% CACC market
penetrations with and without the cooperative signal control algorithm. We had 5 simulation runs for each scenario. Each run
covered 10 min warm-up period and 1-hour simulation time.
The values of the key parameters used in the simulation are listed as follows. If a random distribution is used for a parameter, the
standard deviation is shown in the parentheses. We have adopted the anticipatory accelerations in the simulation. They represent the
average acceleration the vehicles used in the first several seconds after they started accelerating. They were obtained through model
calibration. With those values, the proposed trajectory prediction algorithm could output accurate estimation of the travel distance
for the subject vehicles.

Perception reaction time moving 1.0 s

Perception reaction time stop 2.0 s
Anticipatory acceleration of human 0.5 m/s2
drivers
Anticipatory acceleration of CACC v- 0.7 m/s2
ehicles
Comfortable deceleration 2.5 m/s2
Free flow speed 50 km/h (5 km/h)
Desired headway of human drivers 1.5 s (0.2 s)
Desired headway of CACC drivers 0.6 s for 57% drivers, 0.7 s for 24% drivers, 0.9 s for 7% drivers, 1.1 s for 12% drivers (measured in a field test by
Nowakowski et al., 2010)
Jam gap 1.5 m (0.5 m)
Average vehicle length 4.5 m (0.5 m)
CACC string length limit 15 vehicles
Signal cycle length 90 s
Communication range 300 m

5.1. Impacts of CACC on intersection capacity

We first investigate the impacts of CACC on the intersection capacity when the default actuated signal controller is used. This
analysis can determine the effect of the CACC string operations on the intersection performance. The identified intersection capacity
will be used later as the traffic demand input for examining the impacts of the proposed signal control algorithm. To determine the
intersection capacity, we first load a small traffic input into the network and measure the average 15-minute throughput of each
intersection approach. The process is repeated with a slightly increased traffic demand until the measured 15-minute throughput no
longer rises with the demand. Afterwards, the maximum 15-minute intersection throughput is taken as the intersection capacity.
The intersection capacity with various CACC market penetrations is shown in Fig. 10. We observe a 67% capacity increase for the
major approach (i.e., the northbound and southbound approach), and a 49% increase for the minor approach (i.e., the eastbound and
westbound approach) when the CACC market penetration is 100%. The capacity of the major approach is substantially larger than the
minor approach because the major approach has more lanes and it is assigned longer maximum green time (see Fig. 9). For the major

400
H. Liu, et al. Transportation Research Part C 104 (2019) 390–407

Fig. 10. Intersection capacity per direction with CACC market penetration.

approach, the capacity first increases quadratically as the market penetration changes from 0% to 40%. Afterwards, the increase
follows a linear trend. The rate of increase becomes smaller because of the influence of the lane changing behaviors occurred near the
intersection stop bar. When a subject vehicle needs to make a left turn at the intersection, it must make mandatory lane changes
towards the left turn lane. In higher CACC market penetration cases where the CACC string operation may prevent the subject vehicle
from finding a sufficient gap upstream from the intersection, the lane changing vehicle is often forced to make aggressive last-minute
lane changes near the intersection. This would greatly interrupt the queue discharging flow of the CACC strings. As a result, the
capacity benefit that could have been provided by the CACC string operation is substantially decreased. On the other hand, since the
traffic demand is much smaller on the minor approach, the vehicles that need to make lane changes can complete the lane changing
maneuver upstream from the intersection. Thus, the lane change influence that happened on the major approach is rarely observed.
In this case, the capacity increases more rapidly with the CACC market penetration, leading to a parabolic curve shown in Fig. 10.

5.2. Impacts of the signal control algorithm with CACC market penetration

We aim to determine the impacts of the proposed signal control algorithm under various CACC market penetrations. In the
simulation runs, the traffic demand input for the major approach was 1800 vehicles per hour and the demand for the minor approach
was 350 vehicles per hour. Those inputs were the intersection capacity measured in the 0% CACC case (see Fig. 10). The average
vehicle speed and average vehicle miles travelled per gallon fuel consumed (MPG) were used to depict the effects of the algorithm on
both the traffic flow and vehicle fuel consumption. The vehicle fuel consumption was computed based on the vehicle speed and
acceleration data by using the Virginia Tech Comprehensive Power-based Fuel Consumption Model (Rakha et al., 2011).
The vehicle speed and MPG variations with respect to CACC market penetration are shown in Figs. 11 and 12. The percentages in
the figures depict the improvement of the speed or MPG due to the application of the signal algorithm. Without the signal co-
operation, the curve can be divided into two sections. In the first section where the CACC market penetration rises from 0% to 40%,
we observe a significant increase of speed and vehicle fuel economy. This is because in the 20% or lower CACC cases, the intersection
traffic is very congested under the input traffic demand. Many vehicles need to wait for more than one cycle to pass the intersection,
resulting in great delay and extra vehicle fuel consumption. When the market penetration reaches 40%, the increase of the CACC
strings in the traffic stream substantially increases the efficiency of the traffic flow. As a result, most of the queued vehicles can pass
the intersection in one cycle, thus leading to a boost of the average speed and vehicle fuel efficiency. The second section covers the
cases with the CACC market penetration ranging from 40% to 100%. Within this section, the intersection performance is also
improved because the number of vehicles operating in CACC strings becomes larger. But the rate of the improvement is not as high as
that of the first section.
The proposed cooperative signal control algorithm can assign the green time more efficiently than the default actuated controller.
Consequently, the queued vehicles can be released from the intersection within a control cycle even in cases with 20% or lower CACC

Fig. 11. Average vehicle speed under various CACC market penetrations.

401
H. Liu, et al. Transportation Research Part C 104 (2019) 390–407

Fig. 12. Average vehicle fuel economy (MPG) under various CACC market penetrations.

vehicles. For this reason, the algorithm brings about great performance improvement in the 0% and 20% CACC cases. Notably, the
algorithm performs well in the 0% CACC case where the SPaT computation completely relies on the vehicle count and speed data
obtained via the fixed traffic sensors. With such limited datasets, the algorithm can still generate green time distributions that
substantially improve the speed and MPG. This demonstrates the robustness of the proposed algorithm. Another observation is that
the benefit of the algorithm becomes small when the market penetration is 80% or higher. It does not mean that the algorithm has
little impact at higher CACC market penetration cases. In those cases, the input traffic is too light comparing to the intersection
capacity. The intersection performance is already at a high level with the default actuated control. There is little room for the
algorithm to generate further improvement. This observation inspires us to perform a sensitivity analysis to check if the proposed
algorithm will achieve better results at higher traffic demands. The sensitivity analysis results are shown in the next section.

5.3. Sensitivity analysis on traffic demand

In this analysis, we attempt to test the performance of the algorithm under various traffic demand inputs. This analysis has been
performed for the 40% and 100% CACC market penetration cases. The results can reveal the performance sensitivity under both
medium and high CACC market penetration scenarios. In the tests, we have investigated the effectiveness of the cooperative signal
control when the demand varies from 60% to 100% of the intersection capacity measured under the baseline actuated control case.
The speed and MPG under various demands are displayed in Figs. 13 and 14.
The results show that the effects of the algorithm increase with the traffic demand input. The algorithm creates the most sig-
nificant improvement when the demand is at the intersection capacity. Since such a high demand condition is often observed during
peak hours, it indicates that the algorithm can be applied by traffic operators to relieve the congestion problems that chronically
challenge arterial traffic operations. An interesting observation is that in the 40% CACC case, the effect of the algorithm differs
greatly between the 80% and 90% of capacity. As the traffic input rises from 80% to 90% of the capacity, the intersection traffic
degrades substantially because the default actuated controller fails to serve all queued vehicles in one signal cycle. It further leads to
rapid growth of the queue upstream from the intersection. The queued vehicles that stay idling for more than one cycle significantly
reduce the overall intersection speed and vehicle fuel efficiency. On the other hand, the proposed signal control algorithm can help
avoid the upstream propagation of the queue, thus bringing about a large improvement of the intersection performance.
The figures also show that the cooperative signal control algorithm provides larger benefit in 40% CACC case than in 100% CACC
case when the intersection operates at the capacity. In the 40% CACC case, the traffic becomes very congested when the default
actuated controller is used. The application of the cooperative signal controller results in great improvement of the traffic flow
efficiency, leading to a substantial increase of the average speed and MPG. On the other hand, the intersection can maintain a high
performance in the 100% CACC case even without the proposed algorithm. The introduction of the algorithm only offers a moderate
performance improvement.

Fig. 13. Performance of the signal control algorithm in the 40% CACC case.

402
H. Liu, et al. Transportation Research Part C 104 (2019) 390–407

Fig. 14. Performance of the signal control algorithm in the 100% CACC case.

5.4. Influence of connectivity

In the fully connected traffic environment, both CACC vehicles and manually driven vehicles can share their real-time operation
information with the intersection controller. In this case, the proposed algorithm can always obtain the complete information of the
vehicles in the intersection area. This can help the controller estimate the vehicle travel distance more accurately and hence, provide
better SPaT plans. To understand the effect of vehicle connectivity on the performance of the proposed algorithm, we have performed
simulation analyses for a fully connected traffic environment. The average speed and MPG results are illustrated in Figs. 15 and 16.
The vehicle connectivity offers the most significant improvement in the 0% CACC case. The effectiveness of the connectivity drops
with the CACC market penetration. This is expected because the data sent by the connected manual vehicles can only enhance the
traffic controller’s perception of the traffic conditions when it cannot receive the V2V data from the CACC vehicles. As the number of
the CACC vehicles increases, the traffic controller can obtain sufficient information from the CACC vehicles, it therefore does not need
the additional datasets from the connected manual vehicles. The figure also indicates that the full connectivity creates significant
additional improvements only when the CACC market penetration is 20% or less. When the market penetration is 40% or higher, the
full connectivity is not necessarily needed to improve the performance of the proposed signal algorithm.
The influence of connectivity is also examined under various traffic demand inputs. Figs. 17 and 18 show the results with 20% and
40% CACC cases. In the analyses, low demand represents cases where the traffic input equals to the intersection capacity of the 0%
CACC case; and high demand represents data points of cases when the traffic input equals to the intersection capacity measured under
the baseline actuated control case. The results indicate that the effect of connectivity is consistent regardless of the traffic demand
level. The application of full connectivity has larger impacts in the low CACC market penetration rate case than in the medium CACC
market penetration case.

5.5. Implementation of the signal control algorithm with vehicle trajectory planning

Although not the main focus of this study, we have implemented the proposed signal control algorithm with an optimal vehicle
trajectory planning strategy presented in (Altan et al., 2017). The trajectory planning strategy aims to minimize the vehicle fuel
consumption by reducing the probability that a subject vehicle needs to stop at the stop bar. At the beginning of a signal cycle, the
intersection controller will broadcast the optimal SPaT plan to all CACC vehicle string leaders within the communication range.
Afterwards, the CACC controller will execute the trajectory planning algorithm to compute the speed profiles that allows the host
vehicle to either speed up or slow down to catch up to the closest green window without stopping. As the subject vehicle no longer
accelerates from full stop, the acceleration process becomes less intensive, which leads to vehicle fuel savings.

Fig. 15. Impacts of full connectivity of non-CACC vehicles on speed.

403
H. Liu, et al. Transportation Research Part C 104 (2019) 390–407

Fig. 16. Impacts of full connectivity of non-CACC vehicles on MPG.

Fig. 17. Impacts of full connectivity under various demand levels (20% CACC case).

Fig. 18. Impacts of full connectivity under various demand levels (40% CACC case).

Fig. 19. Impact of the trajectory planning on a subject vehicle’s speed.

404
H. Liu, et al. Transportation Research Part C 104 (2019) 390–407

Fig. 20. Impact of the trajectory planning on a subject vehicle’s fuel consumption.

Table 1
Average vehicle MPG under traffic inputs of 10% and 100% intersection capacity.
10% Capacity 100% Capacity

Baseline Trajectory Planning Baseline Trajectory Planning

Overall 31.4 31.5 0.1% 29.4 29.2 −0.8%

NB 32.1 32.1 0.0% 30.1 29.8 −0.9%
SB 32.0 32.1 0.3% 29.8 29.5 −0.8%
WB 20.6 20.5 −0.6% 19.9 19.7 −1.3%
EB 18.5 18.3 −1.3% 20.8 20.7 −0.4%

The effects of the trajectory planning algorithm on individual vehicles are shown in Figs. 19 and 20. With the algorithm, the
subject vehicle no long needs to stay idling in front of the stop bar. Instead, it can keep cruising at a low speed during the red time and
accelerate gently to the free flow speed once the signal turns green. Interestingly, the change of the acceleration pattern only
contributes a small portion of the energy saving. The major fuel saving can be attributed to the reduced time of the high-speed cruise
after the algorithm is implemented between 15 and 45 s. For the vehicle that turns on the trajectory planning, the fuel consumption
rate per kilometer travelled is lowered by 5.9%.
When we consider the overall traffic flow, the energy saving due to the implementation of the trajectory planning becomes much
less significant. Table 1 shows the average vehicle MPG when the CACC market penetration is 100% and the traffic demand is 10%
and 100% of the intersection capacity measured in the manual driver case. It shows that the vehicle fuel efficiency only has a minor
increase when the demand is 10% of the intersection capacity. The fuel economy even becomes worse when the demand is 100% of
capacity. As the trajectory planning algorithm asks the subject vehicle to start decelerating earlier than it does in the baseline case, it
also causes the following vehicles to join the queue initiated by the leader at an earlier time. Because of the early start of the queue
accumulation, more vehicles upstream from the subject vehicle will be affected by the queue. Fig. 21 compares the queue length time
series between the two cases. The average queue length measured in a 30-second interval indicates that the trajectory planning
algorithm substantially increases the number of vehicles that need to travel in a queue. Many of the queued vehicles would have
passed the intersection without slowing down if the trajectory planning is not implemented. In this case, the benefit of the trajectory
planning for individual subject vehicles is largely offset by the energy loss of the extra queued vehicles. Such an energy loss trend
becomes greater as the traffic demand increases.

Fig. 21. Average queue length measured in 30-second intervals.

405
H. Liu, et al. Transportation Research Part C 104 (2019) 390–407

6. Conclusion

In this study, we have developed a cooperative traffic signal control algorithm that aims to maximize the intersection throughput
by using the capabilities of the CACC vehicle strings. The proposed algorithm outperforms a representative actuated signal controller
because it recognizes that vehicles in CACC strings can utilize the green time resource more efficiently than the manually driven
vehicles, and thus would assign longer green time to an approach that accommodates more CACC vehicle strings than other ap-
proaches. Due to this consideration, the CACC strings can drive through the intersection with reduced delay and increased speed. The
enhancement of the CACC operation can also smooth the overall traffic flow, leading to performance improvements for the manually
driven vehicles as well.
The performance of the cooperative signal control algorithm has been tested against an actuated signal controller at a simulated
four-way intersection. The test results show that the algorithm can improve the average intersection speed by 1.7% to 13.6% and the
average vehicle MPG by 2.2% to 15.3% when the intersection demand equals the capacity measured in the manual vehicle only case.
The most significant impact is observed in the lower CACC market penetration cases. Under those cases, the algorithm can sub-
stantially improve the traffic mobility and vehicle fuel economy by reducing or eliminating the need to wait for multiple cycles before
passing the intersection. In the medium or high CACC market penetration case, the algorithm performs the best when the traffic
demand is close to the intersection capacity measured under the actuated signal control. Particularly, the average speed is increased
by 13% and average MPG by 11% in the 100% CACC case; and the average speed is raised by 36% and MPG by 34% in the 40% CACC
case. The algorithm also performs well in the 0% CACC case where it completely relies on the traffic information monitored by the
fixed traffic sensors. The speed and MPG can be raised by 12.5% and 12.2%, respectively. The improvement in the manual vehicle
only case demonstrates the robustness of the proposed algorithm. When the non-CACC vehicles are all connected, the performance of
the algorithm can be further improved in the 0% CACC case (e.g., 37% speed increase and 29% MPG increase). Nonetheless, the
benefit of the connected non-CACC vehicles decreases significantly as the CACC market penetration reaches 20%. It indicates that the
information required by the algorithm can be sufficiently obtained from the CACC vehicles once the market penetration is 20% or
higher.
We have also performed a preliminary analysis that quantifies the intersection performance when the proposed signal control
algorithm is combined with a vehicle trajectory planning algorithm. However, the results show that the trajectory planning algorithm
cannot create extra benefits when implemented with the signal algorithm. The trajectory planning can only increase the fuel effi-
ciency of the vehicle that receives the optimal trajectory. At the same time, it greatly raises the average queue length of the inter-
section, and the queued vehicles will have a decreased fuel economy. The latter effect offsets the benefit of the former, resulting in the
decrease of the overall intersection performance. This finding suggests that there is a need to develop more advanced trajectory
planning (or eco-approaching) algorithms to enhance the proposed cooperative signal control algorithm. In the presented analyses,
the results are obtained at a single isolated intersection with the specified patterns of through and turning traffic. There are great
needs to extend the proposed algorithm so that it can cover more than one intersection over longer control horizon. One direction is
to develop models to predict the traffic flow of multiple upstream intersections and arterial segments based on the data offered by
upstream roadside sensors and CAVs. This is essential to improve the proposed algorithm such that it not only provides optimal green
time splits for isolated intersections, but also offers optimal cycle length and green time offsets to benefit the operation of an arterial
corridor. The proposed algorithm adopts a heuristic approach to identify the local optimal green time splits. It is also interesting to
explore the exact algorithms that identify global optimal green time splits. We can compare the data of the exact algorithms with the
outputs of the proposed algorithm. Such a study can quantify the ideal performance of the proposed algorithm and identify how to
further improve the heuristic method. We would love to investigate the above topics in our future studies.

Acknowledgement

This paper and the work described were sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Vehicle Technologies Office (VTO)
under the Systems and Modeling for Accelerated Research in Transportation (SMART) Mobility Laboratory Consortium, an initiative
of the Energy Efficient Mobility Systems (EEMS) Program. The authors acknowledge Eric Rask of Argonne National Laboratory for
leading the Connected and Automated Vehicles Pillar of the SMART Mobility Laboratory Consortium. The following DOE Office of
Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) managers played important roles in establishing the project concept, advancing
implementation, and providing ongoing guidance: David Anderson.

References

Al Islam, S.B., Hajbabaie, A., 2017. Distributed coordinated signal timing optimization in connected transportation networks. Transport. Res. Part C: Emerg. Technol.
80, 272–285.
Altan, O.D., Wu, G., Barth, M.J., Boriboonsomsin, K., Stark, J.A., 2017. GlidePath: eco-friendly automated approach and departure at signalized intersections. IEEE
Trans. Intell. Veh. 2 (4), 266–277.
Aziz, H.A., Zhu, F., Ukkusuri, S.V., 2018. Learning-based traffic signal control algorithms with neighborhood information sharing: An application for sustainable
mobility. J. Intell. Transport. Syst. 22 (1), 40–52.
Dresner, K., Stone, P., 2008. A multiagent approach to autonomous intersection management. J. Artif. Intell. Res. 31, 591–656.
Fajardo, D., Au, T.C., Waller, S., Stone, P., Yang, D., 2011. Automated intersection control: performance of future innovation versus current traffic signal control.
Transport. Res. Rec.: J. Transport. Res. Board 2259, 223–232.
Feng, Y., Head, K.L., Khoshmagham, S., Zamanipour, M., 2015. A real-time adaptive signal control in a connected vehicle environment. Transport. Res. Part C: Emerg.
Technol. 55, 460–473.

406
H. Liu, et al. Transportation Research Part C 104 (2019) 390–407

Feng, Y., Yu, C., Liu, H.X., 2018. Spatiotemporal intersection control in a connected and automated vehicle environment. Transport. Res. Part C: Emerg. Technol. 89,
364–383.
Guo, Y., Ma, J., Xiong, C., Li, X., Zhou, F., Hao, W., 2019. Joint optimization of vehicle trajectories and intersection controllers with connected automated vehicles:
combined dynamic programming and shooting heuristic approach. Transport. Res. Part C: Emerg. Technol. 98, 54–72.
He, X., Liu, H.X., Liu, X., 2015. Optimal vehicle speed trajectory on a signalized arterial with consideration of queue. Transport. Res. Part C: Emerg. Technol. 61,
106–120.
Jiang, H., Hu, J., An, S., Wang, M., Park, B.B., 2017. Eco approaching at an isolated signalized intersection under partially connected and automated vehicles
environment. Transport. Res. Part C: Emerg. Technol. 79, 290–307.
Kan, X.D., Xiao, L., Liu, H., Wang, M., Schakel, W.J., Lu, X.Y., van Arem, B., Shladover, S.E., Ferlis, R.A., 2018. Cross-comparison and calibration of two microscopic
traffic simulation models for complex freeway corridors with dedicated lanes. Transportation Research Board 96th Annual Meeting, Washington, DC.
Lee, J., Park, B., 2012. Development and evaluation of a cooperative vehicle intersection control algorithm under the connected vehicles environment. IEEE Trans.
Intell. Transp. Syst. 13 (1), 81–90.
Lee, S., Wong, S.C., Li, Y.C., 2015. Real-time estimation of lane-based queue lengths at isolated signalized junctions. Transport. Res. Part C: Emerg. Technol. 56, 1–17.
Li, Z., Elefteriadou, L., Ranka, S., 2014. Signal control optimization for automated vehicles at isolated signalized intersections. Transport. Res. Part C: Emerg. Technol.
49, 1–18.
Li, Z., Wu, Q., Yu, H., Chen, C., Zhang, G., Tian, Z.Z., Prevedouros, P.D., 2019. Temporal-spatial dimension extension-based intersection control formulation for
connected and autonomous vehicle systems. Transport. Res. Part C: Emerg. Technol. 104, 234–248.
Lioris, J., Pedarsani, R., Tascikaraoglu, F.Y., Varaiya, P., 2017. Platoons of connected vehicles can double throughput in urban roads. Transport. Res. Part C: Emerg.
Technol. 77, 292–305.
Liu, H., Wei, H., Zuo, T., Li, Z., Yang, Y.J., 2017. Fine-tuning ADAS algorithm parameters for optimizing traffic safety and mobility in connected vehicle environment.
Transport. Res. Part C: Emerg. Technol. 76, 132–149.
Liu, H., Kan, X., Shladover, S.E., Lu, X.Y., Ferlis, R.E., 2018a. Impact of cooperative adaptive cruise control on multilane freeway merge capacity. J. Intell. Transport.
Syst. 22 (3), 263–275.
Liu, H., Kan, X.D., Shladover, S.E., Lu, X.Y., Ferlis, R.E., 2018b. Modeling impacts of Cooperative Adaptive Cruise Control on mixed traffic flow in multi-lane freeway
facilities. Transport. Res. Part C: Emerg. Technol. 95, 261–279.
Lu, X., Kan, X., Shladover, S.E., Wei, D., Ferlis, R.A., 2017. An enhanced microscopic traffic simulation model for application to connected automated vehicles.
Transportation Research Board 96th Annual Meeting, Washington, DC.
Ma, J., Li, X., Zhou, F., Hu, J., Park, B.B., 2017. Parsimonious shooting heuristic for trajectory design of connected automated traffic part II: computational issues and
optimization. Transport. Res. Part B: Methodol. 95, 421–441.
Milanés, V., Shladover, S.E., 2014. Modeling cooperative and autonomous adaptive cruise control dynamic responses using experimental data. Transport. Res. Part C:
Emerg. Technol. 48, 285–300.
Milanés, V., Shladover, S.E., Spring, J., Nowakowski, C., Kawazoe, H., Nakamura, M., 2014. Cooperative adaptive cruise control in real traffic situations. IEEE Trans.
Intell. Transp. Syst. 15 (1), 296–305.
Mirheli, A., Tajalli, M., Hajibabai, L., Hajbabaie, A., 2019. A consensus-based distributed trajectory control in a signal-free intersection. Transport. Res. Part C: Emerg.
Technol. 100, 161–176.
Nowakowski, C., O’Connell, J., Shladover, S.E., Cody, D., 2010. Cooperative adaptive cruise control: driver selection of car-following gap settings less than one second.
54th Annual Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Meeting, San Francisco, CA.
Oh, S., Yeo, H., 2012. Microscopic analysis on the causal factors of capacity drop in highway merging sections. Transportation Research Board 91st Annual Meeting,
Washington, DC.
Rakha, H.A., Ahn, K., Moran, K., Saerens, B., Van den Bulck, E., 2011. Virginia tech comprehensive power-based fuel consumption model: model development and
testing. Transport. Res. Part D: Transport Environ. 16 (7), 492–503.
Ramezani, M., Geroliminis, N., 2015. Queue profile estimation in congested urban networks with probe data. Comput. – Aided Civ. Infrastruct. Eng. 30 (6), 414–432.
Roess, R.P., Prassas, E.S., McShane, W.R., 2010. Traffic Engineering. Pearson/Prentice Hall.
Shladover, S.E., Su, D., Lu, X., 2012. Impact of cooperative adaptive cruise control on freeway traffic flow. Transp. Res. Rec. 2324, 63–70.
Shladover, S.E., Nowakowski, C., Lu, X.Y., Ferlis, R., 2015. Cooperative adaptive cruise control: definitions and operating concepts. Transport. Res. Record: J.
Transport. Res. Board 2489, 145–152.
Sun, W., Zheng, J., Liu, H.X., 2018. A capacity maximization scheme for intersection management with automated vehicles. Transport. Res. Part C: Emerg. Technol. 94,
19–31.
Tiaprasert, K., Zhang, Y., Wang, X.B., Zeng, X., 2015. Queue length estimation using connected vehicle technology for adaptive signal control. IEEE Trans. Intell.
Transp. Syst. 16 (4), 2129–2140.
Transportation Research Board (TRB), 2010. Highway Capacity Manual. Transportation Research, Board Washington, DC.
Wu, Y., Chen, H., Zhu, F., 2019. DCL-AIM: Decentralized coordination learning of autonomous intersection management for connected and automated vehicles.
Transport. Res. Part C: Emerg. Technol. 103, 246–260.
Yeo, H., Skabardonis, A., Halkias, J., Colyar, J., Alexiadis, V., 2008. Oversaturated freeway flow algorithm for use in next generation simulation. Transport. Res. Rec.:
J. Transport. Res. Board 2088, 68–79.
Xu, B., Ban, X.J., Bian, Y., Li, W., Wang, J., Li, S.E., Li, K., 2018. Cooperative method of traffic signal optimization and speed control of connected vehicles at isolated
intersections. IEEE Trans. Intell. Transp. Syst. 99, 1–14.
Yang, K., Guler, S.I., Menendez, M., 2016. Isolated intersection control for various levels of vehicle technology: conventional, connected, and automated vehicles.
Transport. Res. Part C: Emerg. Technol. 72, 109–129.
Zohdy, I.H., Rakha, H.A., 2016. Intersection management via vehicle connectivity: the intersection cooperative adaptive cruise control system concept. J. Intell.
Transport. Syst. 20 (1), 17–32.

407