A formal engineering approach that helps handle the complexity and dynamics of FMS modeling, design and analysis is needed. The method is based on the stochastic timed Petri net models of isolated intersections. It considers one direction of traffic along a street each time, and the interactions between traffic of different directions are partially approximated by statistical models. By so doing, it dramatically reduces the computing complexity that other Petri net-based methods suffer due to the consideration of detailed interactions among all directions of traffic. An example is presented to show the potential application of the new method.
Related work is discussed and compared.
Our results establish the basis for reusing these defined connectors and for building more sophisticated connectors from them. We use STPN to specify traffic and traffic control at an intersection and use a random distribution model to model the motion of vehicles in a road segment between any two consecutive intersections. The traffic control system is thus modeled as a composition of individual intersection models and segment distribution models. A technique is presented to incrementally evaluate the system's performance by analyzing intersections separately according to a carefully selected order. The analysis technique conforms to the accepted practice of transportation research.