A disturbance-adaptive design for VANET-enabled vehicle platoon

In highway systems, grouping vehicles into platoons can improve road capacity and energy efficiency. With the advance of technologies, the performance of platoons can be further enhanced by vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs). In the past few years, many studies have been conducted on the dynamics of a VANET-enabled platoon under traffic disturbance, which is a common scenario on a highway. However, most of them do not consider the impact of platoon dynamics on the behaviors of VANETs. Moreover, most existing studies focus on how to maintain the stability of a platoon and do not address how to mitigate negative effects of traffic disturbance, such as uncomfortable passenger experience, increased fuel consumption, and increased exhaust emission. In this paper, we will investigate the dynamics of the VANET-enabled platoon from an integrated perspective. In particular, we first propose a novel disturbance-adaptive platoon (DA-Platoon) architecture, in which a platoon controller shall adapt to the disturbance scenario and shall consider both VANET and platoon dynamics requirements. Based on a specific realization of the DA-Platoon architecture, we then analyze the traffic dynamics inside a platoon and derive desired parameters, including intraplatoon spacing and platoon size, so as to satisfy VANET constraints under traffic disturbance. To mitigate the adverse effects of traffic disturbance, we also design a novel driving strategy for the leading vehicle of a platoon, with which we can determine the desired interplatoon spacing. Finally, we conduct extensive simulation experiments, which not only validate our analysis but also demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed driving strategy.