A New Modeling Methodology of Urban Traffic Lights Based on Timed Coloured Petri Nets

An urban network of signalized intersections can be suitably modeled as discrete event system, in which the traffic light alternations are described by means of timed coloured Petri nets (TCPN). In this paper, a model of such a network via TCPN is used to state and solve the problem of coordinating several traffic lights with six and two phases. Moreover, the analysis of the control TCPN models is performed by occurrence graphs (OG) method. And then the relation of the liveliness and reversibility of the control TCPN will be obtained. Finally, an urban traffic lights' control structure with nine intersections will be realized. To our knowledge, this is the first work that employs TCPN to obtain the models of the urban traffic lights.