In this paper, we investigate cooperative traffic light control for multiple intersections based on semi-realtime processing. As urban traffic congestion problems is increasingly aggravating, existing traffic light controllers can no longer satisfy the rising demands for efficiently easing traffic pressure. | Journal of Automation and Control Engineering Vol. 4, No. 1, February 2016 Cooperative Traffic Light Control Based on Semi-real-time Processing Qin Zhu, Chao Peng, Jingmin Shi, Pengfei Duan, and Yu Bao Shanghai Key Lab of Trustworthy Computing, Software Engineering Institute, East China Normal University, China Email: {51121500045, cpeng}@ Mengjun Xie University of Arkansas at Little Rock, Little Rock, AR 72204, USA mxxie@ able to enhance traffic throughput of intersections and reduce traffic load and stop rate of vehicles on main roads. It is with the above-mentioned awareness that a lot of related researches have been studied during recent decades. One of the primary directions of such researches is traffic light control [2]-[5]. According to USA National Electrical Manufacturers Association (NEMA), most present traffic light control can be classified into two types: fixed-time control and traffic-response control [6]. Unfortunately, both control methods have their own limitations (we will further discuss this in related works). To avoid the deficiency of fixed-time control and traffic-response control, we combine the ideas of two control methods together. In this paper we present an adaptive traffic light control algorithm based on semireal-time processing and cooperation among traffic light controllers. In reality, the traffic situation of urban main roads is extremely complicated. It is almost impossible to instantly calculate the traffic situation for the entire traffic network due to its highly dynamic environment. On the other hand, it is also not necessary to perform real-time processing since the traffic control cycle is usually not very short, so in our approach we set fixed phase duration between traffic light phases in advance. Each intersection has a traffic light controller and each controller decides the next traffic light phase by predicting the traffic situation of its own intersection in the next period. As the traffic situation
