The area-wide real-time traffic control (ARTC) system: Fault-tolerant design and its analysis

A large-scale distributed computing system architecture for the area-wide real-time traffic control system (ARTC) of J.L. Kim et al. (1992) is presented. In the ARTC system, signal controllers coordinate with each other through the communications network to achieve real-time adaptive traffic control. For reliable service, the ARTC system is designed to be fault-tolerant at the I/O component, processor, and network levels. A modular system architecture that enables the ARTC signal controllers to support fault-tolerant design strategies is proposed. A flexible cost-effective networking strategy is presented to support different level network redundancy. In order to estimate the expected service quality of the ARTC control system and to study the reliability effects of signal controller failure rate, the repair efficiency, and the degree of system redundancy, an analytical model is developed.<<ETX>>