Decomposing the dynamics of heterogeneous delayed networks with applications to connected vehicle systems

TL;DR

This paper introduces a decomposition method for analyzing the dynamics of heterogeneous delay-coupled networks, particularly applied to connected vehicle systems, revealing new phenomena in traffic behavior.

Contribution

A novel decomposition technique for heterogeneous delay networks that simplifies analysis and uncovers new physical phenomena in vehicular traffic systems.

Findings

Decouples network dynamics into independent modal equations

Reveals new phenomena in vehicular traffic with V2V communication

Maps spatiotemporal complexity to the time domain

Abstract

Delay-coupled networks are investigated with nonidentical delay times and the effects of such heterogeneity on the emergent dynamics of complex systems are characterized. A simple decomposition method is presented that decouples the dynamics of the network into node-size modal equations in the vicinity of equilibria. The resulting independent components contain distributed delays that map the spatiotemporal complexity of the system to the time domain. We demonstrate that this new approach can be used to reveal new physical phenomena in heterogenous vehicular traffic when vehicles are linked via vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communication.