Impact of beyond-line-of-sight connectivity on the capacity and stability of mixed traffic flow: An analytical and numerical investigation

With the aid of wireless vehicle-to-vehicle communication, connected and automated vehicles (CAVs) are able to access the motion information of vehicles that are beyond-line-of-sight in mixed traffic environment. However, few attention has been paid to the influence of this feature on the mixed traffic flow characteristics. To fill this gap, this paper attempts to unveil the effect of beyond-line-of-sight connectivity on capacity and stability of mixed traffic flow. Specifically, we first formulate the distribution of various driving modes in mixed traffic based on the Markov model. Then, the analytical model of the capacity for mixed traffic is developed with proper time headway settings. Furthermore, the extensively implemented linear stability analysis procedure is extended to accommodate the beyond-line-of-sight connectivity feature. The analytical results show that (1) the proportion of CAVs in coordinated driving with beyond-line-of-sight reaches its peak at the half of penetration rate and lowest platoon clustering intensity for CAVs; (2) the capacity and stability performance are promoted with introducing the coordinated driving mode, and the increment becomes larger with the increase of communication range limit. (3) introducing coordinated driving can be an alternative to shifting the penetration rate of CAVs to improve the stability and capacity of mixed traffic in some cases.