Distributed Traffic State Estimation in Connected Vehicle and Roadside Infrastructure Networks

Vincent de Heij, M. Umar B. Niazi, Saeed Ahmed, Karl H. Johansson

This paper proposes a distributed traffic state estimation framework that combines infrastructure sensors and connected vehicles as cooperative sensing nodes. Using Vehicle-to-Everything (V2X) communication, nearby nodes exchange local estimates and update them through a distributed Kalman filter designed for a second-order macroscopic traffic flow model. A consensus step fuses heterogeneous information across the network, while projection steps enforce physically consistent traffic states. We evaluate the method on HighD and NGSIM data, and on microscopic SUMO simulations that capture transient congestion. The results show accurate reconstruction of highway traffic states and detection of nonlinear shockwave dynamics, even with sparse infrastructure sensing and intermittent vehicular connectivity. A statistical analysis further shows how CV penetration rate, V2X communication range, and infrastructure deployment affect estimation accuracy. In particular, with 10% CV penetration, V2X ranges of 300-400 m, and sparse infrastructure deployment, the combined infrastructure-vehicle configuration consistently outperforms approaches that rely only on infrastructure or only on connected vehicles.