Merging Assistance at an Expressway Ramp with Vehicle-to-Vehicle Communications

摘要

This paper proposes a merging assistance algorithm at an expressway ramp with vehicle-to-vehicle communications and considers the relationship between waiting time of merging vehicles and the penetration rate of the communication unit. When a vehicle with the unit in the through traffic flow has a certain gap, it widens the gap ahead by reducing the speed to allow the merging. Regardless the penetration rate, the communications can assist the merging. When the mean headway is longer than 5 [s], the waiting time can be shortened by more than 50 %, while when the mean headway is shorter than 5 [s], the waiting time will becomes longer, and when the mean headway is 2.5 [s], the waiting time will be shortened by about 20 %.