Abstract
The advent of the autonomous car is paving the road to the realization of ideas that will help optimize traffic flows, increase safety and reduce fuel consumption, among other advantages. We present one proposal to bring together Virtual Traffics Lights (VTLs) and platooning in urban scenarios, leaning on vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communication protocols that turn intersections into virtual containers of data. Newly-introduced protocols for the combined management of VTLs and platoons are validated by simulation, comparing a range of routing protocols for the vehicular networks with the baseline given by common deployments of traditional traffic lights ruled by state-of-the-art policies. The simulation results show that the combination of VTLs and platoons can achieve significant reductions in travel times and fuel consumption, provided that proper algorithms are used to handle the V2V communications.
Highlights
Cars are becoming increasingly equipped with sensing, computing and communication capabilities
We directly present the average values of travel times and fuel consumption from configurations 1, 2 and 3 normalized with regard to the best average values from configuration 0
The average difference is around 2% of global travel times and 3% of fuel consumption, which can be taken as a justification for the increased complexity of our stack of protocols (Figure 1) in comparison with placing Virtual Traffics Lights (VTLs) logic directly on top of IEEE 802.11p (It must be noted that the VaNetLayer and VNIBR protocols are of general use, so they can support any other communication services in vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) in addition to VTL management, as explained in [12,13])
Summary
Cars are becoming increasingly equipped with sensing, computing and communication capabilities. Fed by advances in many areas of computer science (from signal processing and wireless communications to computer vision, human-computer interaction and many others), technology has been yielding significant advances in terms of safety during the last few years. Advanced Driving Assistance Systems (ADAS) are commonplace, covering features such as automatic braking, collision protection and emergency assistance [1]. Better connectivity through vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) communications [2] enables the automobiles to assemble accurate views of the areas they traverse, and thereby optimize their routes and fuel consumption [3]. Assistance to find parking spaces and richer entertainment services are among recent proposals too [4,5]. The major change will be that of autonomous driving, featuring adaptive cruise control, self-parking, highway autopilot and more [6]
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