Traffic Micro-simulation in Realistic Road Scenarios of Cooperative Adaptive Cruise Control

In this work, Cooperative Adaptive Cruise Control (C-ACC) systems were studied and analyzed in a traffic micro-simulator (Aimsun Next), either by merely changing vehicle behavior parameters or through a specific algorithm. The main aim was to study and present the advantages and drawbacks linked to C-ACC in an ordinary traffic environment with limited congestion phenomena. Two different experiments were carried out. First, for verifying the algorithm, defining different strategies for its actions, and understanding in which traffic volume it was possible to exploit C-ACC operations best. The second test was performed for evaluating, both globally and locally, the influence of C-ACC in traffic flows. The examined road scenario is a real motorway, located in Piedmont, which also includes ramps for merging and diverging maneuvers. The simulated experiments in realistic scenarios confirm the traffic performance trends observed in preliminary tests and the increase of the average speed of vehicles even for a low market penetration rate (MPR) of C-ACC in traffic flow. On the other hand, average headway trends change only for high MPRs, especially in terms of its variance, which is reduced. In these scenarios, to also explore traffic stability, local traffic parameters were monitored, such as vehicle speed and acceleration.