ALBERT

Description: Reinforcement learning (RL)-based traffic signal control has been proven to have great potential in alleviating traffic congestion. The state definition, which is a key element in RL-based traffic signal control, plays a vital role. However, the data used for state definition in the literature are either coarse or difficult to measure directly using the prevailing detection systems for signal control. This paper proposes a deep reinforcement learning-based traffic signal control method which uses high-resolution event-based data, aiming to achieve cost-effective and efficient adaptive traffic signal control. High-resolution event-based data, which records the time when each vehicle-detector actuation/de-actuation event occurs, is informative and can be collected directly from vehicle-actuated detectors (e.g., inductive loops) with current technologies. Given the event-based data, deep learning techniques are employed to automatically extract useful features for traffic signal control. The proposed method is benchmarked with two commonly used traffic signal control strategies, i.e., the fixed-time control strategy and the actuated control strategy, and experimental results reveal that the proposed method significantly outperforms the commonly used control strategies.

Description: Traffic conditions can be more accurately estimated using data assimilation techniques since these methods incorporate an imperfect traffic simulation model with the (partial) noisy measurement data. In this paper, we propose a data assimilation framework for vehicle density estimation on urban traffic networks. To compromise between computational efficiency and estimation accuracy, a mesoscopic traffic simulation model (we choose the platoon based model) is employed in this framework. Vehicle passages from loop detectors are considered as the measurement data which contain errors, such as missed and false detections. Due to the nonlinear and non-Gaussian nature of the problem, particle filters are adopted to carry out the state estimation, since this method does not have any restrictions on the model dynamics and error assumptions. Simulation experiments are carried out to test the proposed data assimilation framework, and the results show that the proposed framework can provide good vehicle density estimation on relatively large urban traffic networks under moderate sensor quality. The sensitivity analysis proves that the proposed framework is robust to errors both in the model and in the measurements.

Description: Due to the uncertainties of radar target prior information in the actual scene, the waveform designed based on radar target prior information cannot meet the needs of detection and parameter estimation performance. In this paper, the optimal waveform design techniques under energy constraints for different tasks are considered. To improve the detection performance of radar systems, a novel waveform design method which can maximize the signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) for known and random extended targets is proposed. To improve the performance of parameter estimation, another waveform design method which can maximize the mutual information (MI) between the radar echo and the random-target spectrum response is also considered. Most of the previous waveform design researches assumed that the prior information of the target spectrum is completely known. However, in the actual scene, the real target spectrum cannot be accurately captured. To simulate this scenario, the real target spectrum was assumed to be within an uncertainty range where the upper and lower bounds are known. Then, the SINR- and MI-based maximin robust waveforms were designed, which could optimize the performance under the most unfavorable conditions. The simulation results show that the designed optimal waveforms based on these two criteria are different, which provides useful guidance for waveform energy allocation in different transmission tasks. However, under the constraint of limited energy, we also found that the performance improvement of SINR or MI in the worst case for single targets is less significant than that of multiple targets.