An Efficient Skip Link-based Traffic Prediction Algorithm with Multi-Scale Feature Extraction

Traffic prediction is an important component in the development of Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS). To improve the accuracy of traffic prediction, many existing studies focus on combining recurrent neural networks and graph neural networks and achieve certain effects, but these works still suffer from some limitations on realizing rigorous long-term traffic foreseeing in highly dynamic spatio-temporal environments. To address this issue, we propose an efficient skip link-based traffic prediction algorithm with multiscale feature extraction (SKMSGCN). Specifically, we firstly design an available Spatio-temporal Traffic Feature Extraction module (STFE) based on the established information fusion scheme, to sufficiently obtain long-term traffic feature correlations. In addition, by means of memory networks, we propose a Critical traffic Feature Classification module (CFC), to obtain notable features from traffic sensor nodes with different attributions and further increase traffic prediction accuracy. Moreover, in order to efficiently process the input data of enhanced traffic features from CFC module and achieve the precise traffic foreseeing, we construct a long-term traffic prediction module based on graph convolutional networks and gate recurrent units. The extensive experimental results on two typical benchmark datasets firmly demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed SKMSGCN in quantitative aspects.