H State Feedback Controller for ODE Model of Traffic Flow

In this study, we propose an H state feedback controller for freeway traffic flow. The integrated freeway traffic flow management scheme is applied through coordination of ramp metering and variable speed limit. In order to improve the service characteristics of mainstream and on-ramps, we have designed a controller that sustains the mainstream flow around a critical density while concerning the on-ramp queue lengths. We have used the state space discretized ODE model of traffic flow to design continuous-time feedback controllers. The performance of the controller is validated on a micro-simulation environment which is calibrated by field data. The simulation results show that the H controller decreases the average densities and the average queue lengths on on-ramps.