Hierarchical control with simulation study for large scale urban traffic networks

This paper develops a hierarchical control strategy for large scale urban traffic networks, which divides a large scale network to several small subnetworks, and the structure contains two levels. The coordination controller in the upper level gets the optimized flow rate of the whole network by coordinating the flows between subnetworks. The model predictive controllers in the lower level follow what the upper controller sets for them and find the best control signals with the real-time traffic information. At last, we use CORSIM to compare the result with fixed-time control through simulation, and show the effectiveness of the hierarchical control.