Cooperative driving in mixed traffic networks — Optimizing for performance

This paper discusses a cooperative adaptive cruise control application and its effects on the traffic system. In previous work this application has been tested on the road, and traffic simulation has been used to scale up the results of the field test to larger networks and more vehicles. The present study investigates the dependence of the traffic impact of the time headway settings of the application and on its penetration rate. It will be shown both theoretically and empirically that traffic flows and road capacities will improve significantly with the fraction of equipped vehicles, and that this improvement depends on the configuration of the application.