Distributed Mutual Exclusion Algorithms for Intersection Traffic Problems

• Published in: IEEE access Vol. 8; p. 1
• Main Authors: Shehu, Harisu Abdullahi, Sharif, Md. Haidar, Ramadan, Rabie A.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Piscataway IEEE 01-01-2020; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Algorithm; Algorithms; Automobiles; Computational complexity; Computing costs; Critical section; Delays; Intersection; Multi-agent system; Multi-agent systems; Multiagent systems; Mutual exclusion; Simulation; Statistical analysis; System effectiveness; System recovery; Traffic congestion; Traffic control; Traffic flow; Traffic intersections; Traffic signals; Vehicle; Vehicular ad hoc networks
• ISSN: 2169-3536; 2169-3536
• DOI: 10.1109/ACCESS.2020.3012573

Conurbations around the globe are encountering the challenges of traffic congestion. Miscellaneous smart systems have been developed to help control and improve traffic flow in a cost-effective and measurable way. Yet, the existing systems solve the traffic congestion problem with cost-intensive traffic lights and mostly handle emergency cases poorly. In this paper, to minimize the traffic congestion problems for any kind of vehicles without using traffic lights, we propose three deadlock-free algorithms namely: (i) Mutual exclusion algorithm based on single instruction (MEASIR), (ii) Mutual exclusion algorithm based on priority (MEAPRI), and (iii) Mutual exclusion algorithm based on multi-agent systems (MEAMAS). Communication inside a group is accomplished via a queue structure, while an external element (e.g., a router) is used for internal communications. Besides the depiction of experimental and simulation results, a complete statistical analysis has been performed to compare the performance of MEASIR, MEAPRI, and MEAMAS with their alternatives. Our proposed deadlock-free algorithms are not only efficient but also functional with a computational cost of O(n) to enter the critical section, where n represents the number of all vehicles in a particular intersection.