College of Computer Science, Sichuan University, Chengdu 610065, China; Institute of Electronic System Engineering, Beijing 100840, China; State Key Laboratory of Software Engineering, Wuhan
University, Wuhan 430007, China
Abstract:
Cellular Automaton (CA) based traffic flow models have been
extensively studied due to their effectiveness and simplicity in
recent years. This paper develops a discrete time Markov chain
(DTMC) analytical framework for a Nagel--Schreckenberg and
Fukui--Ishibashi combined CA model (W$^2$H traffic flow model) from
microscopic point of view to capture the macroscopic steady state
speed distributions. The inter-vehicle spacing Markov chain and the
steady state speed Markov chain are proved to be irreducible and
ergodic. The theoretical speed probability distributions depending
on the traffic density and stochastic delay probability are in good
accordance with numerical simulations. The derived fundamental
diagram of the average speed from theoretical speed distributions is
equivalent to the results in the previous work.