Instantaneous information propagation in free flow, synchronized flow, stop-and-go waves in a cellular automaton model

Recently, a number of efforts are underway to investigate inter-vehicle communications (IVC). This paper studies the instantaneous information propagation behaviours based on IVC in three different traffic situations (free flow, synchronized flow and stop-and-go waves) in a cellular automaton model. It is shown that different behaviours appear in stop-and-go waves from those in free flow and synchronized flow. While the distribution of Multi-hop Communication Distance (MhCD) is either exponential or uniform in free flow and synchronized flow, the distribution of MhCD is either exponential or with a single peak in stop-and-go waves.