Freeway ramp metering control made easy and efficient

“Model-free” control and the related “intelligent” proportional-integral (PI) controllers are successfully applied to freeway ramp metering control. Implementing moreover the corresponding control strategy is straightforward. Numerical simulations on the other hand need the identification of quite complex quantities like the free flow speed and the critical density. This is achieved thanks to new estimation techniques where the differentiation of noisy signals plays a key rôle. Several excellent computer simulations are provided and analyzed.