An estimation model of time-varying origin-destination flows in expressway corridors based on unscented Kalman filter

On the basis of measurable time series of mainline and ramp flows from traffic counts and the assumption of travel time distributions, this research presents a dynamic system model and its on-line estimation algorithm for recursive estimation of time-varying origin-destination (OD) matrices in expressway corridors. The proposed model employs a macro-traffic flow model to estimate travel times of OD flows and uses parameters of the traffic model as state variables, which are added to the constrained function of the system. To improve the model efficiency, we revise the travel time distribution based on the feature of normal distribution. The research employs a newly developed filtering technique, called unscented Kalman filter. The proposed model is evaluated with simulation experiments. Numerical analyses with respect to the sensitivity of the selection of initial parameters on the estimation results indicate that the proposed model is sufficiently reasonable and stable for real-world appli-cations.