United States Department of Transportation
i
Feasibility Study and Assessment of Communications Approaches for Real-Time Traffic Signal Applications— Final Report
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2020-06-09
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[PDF-4.15 MB]
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Abstract:Connected and automated vehicle (CAV) technology is expected to significantly improve transportation systems by providing benefits in mobility, safety, and environment via connectivity between vehicles and the infrastructure. This study investigates if and how two representative communications approaches—dedicated short-range communication (DSRC) and cellular (3GPP 4G/LTE)—can support various CAV applications. The Virginia Connected Corridor (VCC), operated by the Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) and Virginia Tech Transportation Institute (VTTI), was used as a testbed for this project. To provide a robust evaluation, signal phase and timing (SPaT) data transmitted by DSRC and cellular were collected in the field at various intersections in northern Virginia and compared based on latency and distance coverage. The latency experienced by SPaT messages over DSRC was below 5 milliseconds (ms), while the latency of cellular network was well below 100 ms. Specifically, the minimum, median, and maximum latency values for DSRC are 0.8, 1.1, and 1.5 ms, respectively; for cellular, they are 7.7, 36.4, and 68.0 ms, respectively. The minimum and maximum communication ranges for DSRC were 430 and 1,365 meters (m), respectively; for cellular, they were 1,171 and 3,751 m, respectively. An application analysis was conducted to assess the impact of latency and coverage on the feasibility of supporting various safety and non-safety applications, including Glidepath, Traffic Optimization for Signalized Corridors (TOSCo), transit signal priority (TSP), and red light violation warning (RLVW). Based on the data analysis, it was inferred that Glidepath and TOSCo could benefit from the near-ubiquitous coverage of cellular networks by receiving the data farther away from the intersection, whereas applications like TSP and RLVM, which require a low latency, may not be supported by the cellular network. Finally, opportunities for further study are suggested, which include the study of other performance metrics, such as accuracy and reliability, and the study of alternate communications methods.
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