Optimization of Traffic Signals Timing Using Parameter-less Metaheuristic Optimization Algorithms

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Date
2018-07-22
Authors
Thaher, Thaer
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جامعة النجاح الوطنية
Abstract
Traffic congestion is a common challenge in urban areas, so several methods are used to reduce it. A powerful solution that can reduce the congestion problem is by developing a real-time traffic light control system with an optimization technique to minimize the overall traffic delay through optimizing the traffic signals timing. Researchers have proposed several simulation models and used various techniques to optimize the traffic signals timing. The purpose of this research is to evaluate and compare the performance of several meta-heuristic techniques in tackling the Traffic Signals Optimization Problem (TSOP). In this work, recently published algorithms that do not have specific parameters (the parameter-less) such as Teaching-Learning-Based Optimization (TLBO) and Jaya are applied to solve the traffic signals optimization problem. These algorithms have not been applied to the considered problem yet. A stochastic micro-simulator called 'Simulation of Urban Mobility' (SUMO) is used as a tool to implement and evaluate the performance and convergence speed of each algorithm. Three road networks of different sizes: small, medium and large containing 13, 34 and 141 phases respectively are simulated to study the scalability of algorithms. The performance of TLBO and Jaya algorithms are compared to three algorithms that have some parameters that need to be set such as Genetic Algorithm (GA), Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO), and Weighted Teaching-Learning-Based Optimization (WTLBO). The study also considers the effect of common controlling parameters (i.e. the population size) on the performance of the evaluated algorithms. After conducting many experiments, the comparisons and discussions have shown that TLBO and Jaya outperformed WTLBO, GA, and PSO for small and medium-sized networks. Moreover, TLBO achieved the best performance and scalability for the complex network
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