Integrated performance evaluation of roadside equipment placement for real-time traffic monitoring

Roadside equipment (RSE) is a key component to collect/disseminate information from/to vehicles in a Connected Vehicle (CV) environment. It plays different roles in various safety, mobility and environmental applications. In the future, millions of RSE can be deployed on urban streets and highways. At the initial stage of CV development, however, it may be a costly and unfeasible solution to deploy RSE pervasively to provide continuous coverage or connectivity. The use of powerful simulation tools, that federate the traffic and communication simulator, provides a realistic and affordable evaluation solution. It can assist in testing various RSE placement strategies, system parameter configurations and particular application designs. In this paper a CV simulation platform, which links traffic simulator VISSIM with network simulator OMNeT++, is utilized to evaluate the traffic and communication performance of different RSE placement strategies and system parameter settings in an urban freeway scenario. The simulation results clearly reveal that the traffic monitoring performance and communication performance are sensitive to the RSE placement and system parameter settings. The utility of the developed simulator performed reasonably in conducting CV application evaluations.