English

Infinitesimal Perturbation Analysis for Quasi-Dynamic Traffic Light Controllers

Optimization and Control 2014-02-28 v1

Abstract

We consider the traffic light control problem for a single intersection modeled as a stochastic hybrid system. We study a quasi-dynamic policy based on partial state information defined by detecting whether vehicle backlogs are above or below certain controllable thresholds. Using Infinitesimal Perturbation Analysis (IPA), we derive online gradient estimators of a cost metric with respect to these threshold parameters and use these estimators to iteratively adjust the threshold values through a standard gradient-based algorithm so as to improve overall system performance under various traffic conditions. Results obtained by applying this methodology to a simulated urban setting are also included.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1402.6721,
  title  = {Infinitesimal Perturbation Analysis for Quasi-Dynamic Traffic Light Controllers},
  author = {Julia L. Fleck and Christos G. Cassandras},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1402.6721},
  year   = {2014}
}

Comments

Extended version of the paper to be published in the Proceedings of the 12th IFAC-IEEE International Workshop on Discrete Event Systems (2014)

R2 v1 2026-06-22T03:16:41.570Z