National Institute for Advanced Transportation Technology (U.S.)

United States. Dept. of Transportation. Research and Special Programs Administration

N11-07

Tech Report

Idaho

Final report; Jan. 2009-Sept. 2011.

National Institute for Advanced Transportation Technology (U.S.)

NTL-OPERATIONS AND TRAFFIC CONTROLS-Traffic Control Devices ; NTL-OPERATIONS AND TRAFFIC CONTROLS-Traffic Flow ;

The built-in logic functions in traffic controllers have very limited capability to store information, to analyze input data, to estimate performance measures, and to adopt control strategy decisions. These capabilities are imperative to support traffic signal control research. In this research, a microcontroller was proven to be capable of filling this need in the form of an external logic processor for a network of traffic signal controllers. This research demonstrates this capability by addressing queue spillback congestion on a network of signalized intersections. In this study, the Rabbit 3000 microcontroller takes on the role of an external logic processor and is networked with multiple ASC/3 traffic controllers to prove the concept. Both the Rabbit and the traffic controllers support Ethernet connectivity and data exchange using the NTCIP standard. The findings show that the proposed architecture is capable of collecting data from multiple traffic controllers, calculating performance measures, and implementing control strategies in one or more traffic controller(s) that improves performance.

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US Transportation Collection