Proactive Effects of C-V2X-Based Vehicle-Infrastructure Cooperation on the Stability of Heterogeneous Traffic Flow

Connected vehicles (CVs) utilizing cellular vehicle-to-everything (C-V2X) technology are increasingly coexisting on the road with regular vehicles (RVs). As these CVs interact with each other and with roadside infrastructure through vehicle-vehicle and vehicle-infrastructure cooperation, the characteristics of traffic flow are changing in significant ways. It is therefore crucial to understand how different parameters of CVs, roadside sensors, and V2X communications affect the stability of heterogeneous traffic flow. In this research, we investigate the impact of several transportation and infrastructure parameters on the stability of heterogeneous traffic flow. Specifically, we first examine the effects of traffic density, penetration rate of CVs, detection accuracy of roadside sensors, and time delays in V2X communications. We propose a novel C-V2X-based vehicle-vehicle/vehicle-infrastructure cooperation architecture and develop a car-following model based on it. Then, the theoretical stability condition for heterogeneous traffic flow is derived, which reveals the interdependence of transportation and infrastructure parameters. The numerical simulations show that the proposed C-V2X-based vehicle-vehicle/vehicle-infrastructure cooperation architecture achieves traffic flow stability at lower CV penetration rates compared to existing studies that only consider vehicle-to-vehicle communications. This finding highlights the importance of leveraging the full potential of C-V2X technology for improving traffic flow stability in real-world settings.