Urban traffic congestion was a challenging problem. In recent years, researchers in the fields of transportation and computer science devoted considerable attention to studying real-time traffic signal control (RTSC) to alleviate urban traffic congestion. This paper reviewed various methods for RTSC, categorizing them based on the algorithms. Additionally, simulators were summarized to validate algorithm performances, and the analysis further explored the interrelationships between different traffic entities, optimization objectives, and network types. Finally, potential avenues for future research in traffic signal control (TSC) were discussed, with the aim of providing valuable references to researchers working on intelligent transportation systems (ITS) for practical implementations.