V2X-Based Traffic Congestion Recognition and Avoidance

Vehicular traffic congestion is a global phenomenon that has increased in importance in the last decades and has caused economically and ecologically negative effects. Thus, finding a way to improve traffic efficiency is a high-frequented problem to be solved by scientists and politicians worldwide. One new promising approach is the usage of decentralized wireless vehicle to vehicle communication based on the Vehicle-2-X (V2X) technology. The idea is that vehicles share information about the current local traffic situation and use this information to optimize their routes. In this paper, we introduce a new algorithm that can be used by navigation systems to calculate routes circumnavigating congested roads. For this purpose, each vehicle transmits its average speed of a road segment to vehicles in the neighbourhood. As a result, vehicles receiving this information can recalculate their routes based on the knowledge about the current possible speeds in the road segments of their neighbourhood. To evaluate the improvements that can be achieved by our algorithm, simulations have been done. Our results show that navigation systems using the V2X technology for a more intelligent route calculation can improve the traffic efficiency of future transport systems.