Traffic Flow Simulators with Connected and Autonomous Vehicles: A Short Review

Autonomous Vehicles (AVs) and Connected Autonomous Vehicles (CAVs) are being widely tested and rapidly developed over the past few years. With the development and increasing number of AVs and CAVs in mixed traffic flow, it is necessary to analyze their impact on traffic safety, flow, speed, fuel consumption, and emissions. Also, appropriate traffic control algorithms need to be developed before they can be fully implemented and integrated into the traffic environment. To do so, such mixed traffic flows must be simulated in various traffic scenarios. Traffic flow simulators paired with communication network simulators are commonly used to perform multiple simulations of such traffic flows. In this paper, three often used traffic simulators VISSIM, AIMSUN, and SUMO paired with network simulators NS-3 and OMNET++ with their features to model AVs and CAVs in a simulation environment are analyzed. According to currently available and tested simulators in the research community, the most used ones were compared. Results of the synthesized technical aspects of each suggest that AIMSUN Next is more suitable for a less complex traffic model. At the same time, VISSIM is more suitable for a more complex traffic model.