Simulation Study on the Application of Traffic-Flow Complexity Measure in Traffic Control

The study about how to estimate and measure the complexity of traffic flow system is in the ascendant. The application of complexity measure methods in traffic control is becoming a research frontier. In this paper, the simulation tests were used to study the application of complexity measure in traffic control. First, the improved Lempel-Ziv algorithm was introduced to scientifically depict the complexity of a traffic flow system. Then, the follows were validated by simulation: i) whether there is some influence of traffic control on traffic-flow complexity and to what degree the influence is if it exists; ii) the effect of complexity as a control index on the output of traffic control. The concludes are as follows: i) the complexity of a traffic flow is different under different green split, which indicates that the complexity of traffic flow can be changed by traffic control; ii) the information quantity of performance function is enriched by the accession of a new variable, i.e., complexity, which shows that complexity can and should be used in traffic control.