Communication Delay-Aware Network Topology Adaptation for Cooperative Control of Vehicular Platoons

Abstract

Communication-enabled Cooperative Adaptive Cruise Control (CACC) is an important technology to improve the safety and traffic capacity of vehicle platoons. However, most existing CACC research considers a conventional communication delay and fixed network topology. When the network is attacked, the stability of the system will be affected. In this paper, a CACC system considering dynamic network topologies and communication delay jitters is proposed. A multi-vehicle look ahead network topology of CACC is designed to investigate the relationship between communication delay and the optimal network topology. Control parameters are obtained by solving Algebraic Riccati equations. Moreover, the relationship between the minimum inter-vehicle spacing and the communication delay is analyzed and derived under different network topologies. Finally, the performance of the proposed CACC system with adaptive network topologies is evaluated by simulations. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed CACC system outperforms the H infinity synthesis-based controller considering the fixed network topologies. The robustness against communication failure of the proposed system, such as the DeGrading of Service (DGoS) attack, can be significantly improved, which can reduce the minimum safety headway buffer and further support better mobility of vehicles.