Formulation of modern signal control operations as a non-linear mixed integer program

Abstract

This paper presents a mathematical formulation for the problem of optimizing the operations of a modern traffic signal in a possibly offline evaluation mode. The demand is assumed to be known for the entire optimization period. The signal operations are acyclic, with no fixed staging or stage durations. Solution techniques for the resulting nonlinear mixed integer program are discussed. It is envisaged that the technique can be used to obtain the optimal signal control over a time horizon as a benchmark to compare the performance of other signal control techniques including adaptive control schemes.