On the network connectivity of platoon-based vehicular cyber-physical systems

Abstract

In the past few years, vehicular ad-hoc network (VANET) has attracted significant attention and many fundamental issues have been investigated, such as network connectivity, medium access control (MAC) mechanism, routing protocol, quality of service (QoS), etc. Nevertheless, most related work has been based on simplified assumptions on the underlying vehicle traffic dynamics, which has a tight interaction with VANET in practice. In this paper, we try to investigate VANET performance from the vehicular cyber-physical system (VCPS) perspective. Specifically, we consider VANET connectivity of platoonbased VCPSs where all vehicles drive in platoon-based patterns, which facilitate better traffic performance as well as information services. We first propose a novel architecture for platoon-based VCPSs, then we derive the vehicle distribution under platoon-based driving patterns on a highway. Based on the results, we further investigate inter-platoon connectivity in a bi-directional highway scenario and evaluate the expected time of safety message delivery among platoons, taking into account the effects of system parameters, such as traffic flow, velocity, platoon size and transmission range. Extensive simulations are conducted which validate the accuracy of our analysis. This study will be helpful to understand the behavior of VCPSs, and will be helpful to improve vehicle platoon design and deployment.

A Survey on Platoon-Based Vehicular Cyber-Physical Systems

“…A platoon-based VCPS is supposed to describe vehicular applications, such as safety applications or infotainment services, in a VANET environment from the CPS perspective, where each vehicle drives in a platoon-based pattern. Jia et al [67] jointly considered VANET operation and platoon dynamics, and proposed architecture for platoon-based VCPSs. Based on this work, a general platoon-based VCPSs architecture can be illustrated in Fig.…”

“…To effectively transmit safety message in VANETs, a storecarry-forward scheme has been proposed which exploits opportunistic connectivity between vehicles moving on opposing directions to achieve greedy data forwarding [67], [116]- [118]. Kesting et al [116] proposed a transversal message hopping strategy to transfer message between consecutive vehicles.…”

Platoon management with cooperative adaptive cruise control enabled by VANET

“…IEEE 802.11p protocol, the standard protocol adopted for V2V communication in Veins (Vehicles in Network Simulation) framework [36], is used for wireless communication between CACC vehicles. Integration of SUMO and OMNET++ has been used in many previous researches and is getting more popular [37,20,7].…”

“…It is considered as a promising solution to reduce fuel consumption in HDVs [3,4,5], and is getting increasing attention from private fleets and commercial carriers [6]. Last but not least, platooning facilitates more efficient information dissemination and sharing among vehicles in the same platoon [7].…”

Using topology and neighbor information to overcome adverse vehicle density conditions

“…The specific characteristics of VANETs favor the development of attractive and challenging services and applications, including road safety, traffic flow management, road status monitoring, environmental protection, and mobile infotainment (Jia et al, 2013;Paula et al, 2011;Zhou et al, 2011). In this work we focus on traffic safety and efficient warning message dissemination, where the main goal is to reduce the latency while increasing the accuracy of the information received by nearby vehicles when a dangerous situation occurs.…”