A Refined Mathematical Model for Quantifying Platoon Intensity in Mixed Traffic Environments

This paper presents a refined mathematical definition of platoon intensity for mixed traffic environments involving autonomous vehicles and human-driven vehicles. The existing Markov-chain model treats platoon intensity as a conceptual parameter, limiting its ability to capture the structural characteristics of actual vehicle sequences. To address this limitation, the proposed approach quantifies platoon intensity using the average lengths of consecutive autonomous and human-driven vehicles. This reformulation enables a direct evaluation of platoon formation and disruption under diverse mixed traffic conditions. The proposed measure provides a practical tool for mixed traffic analysis, intelligent transportation system design, autonomous vehicle deployment planning, and real-time platoon management.