String Stability Analysis of Mixed CACC Vehicular Flow With Vehicle-to-Vehicle Communication

Abstract

This paper focuses on traffic scenarios randomly mixed with cooperative adaptive cruise control (CACC) vehicles and manual vehicles with vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communication. The analytical investigation of string stability of such mixed traffic flow is conducted under different CACC penetration rates. The parametric sensitivity analysis on CACC desired time-gap is also studied. Moreover, numerical simulation is conducted under both open and periodic boundary conditions. Research results indicate that increase of CACC vehicles is helpful for improving the mixed traffic flow string stability. The mixed flow will be stable for all possible velocities if CACC rate reaches to 0.64 when the CACC time-gap is considered as 0.6s. Larger CACC time-gap would have more stable regions in string stability charts with respect to equilibrium velocity and CACC penetration rate. This paper contributes to a new way for analytical investigation of string stability of the mixed CACC traffic flow.