Distributed Model Predictive Control Algorithm with Communication Delays for a Cooperative Adaptive Cruise Control Vehicle Platoon

This paper proposes a distributed model predictive control (DMPC) strategy with known delays in the communication network. The algorithm is suitable for a vehicle platooning application in the cooperative adaptive cruise control (CACC) framework. All the platoon vehicles are connected in a uni-directional wireless communication network. The simulation results for a five-vehicle platoon show that the DMPC optimization problem can successfully accommodate for the communication delays, while a velocity-dependent inter-vehicle spacing-policy for the follower vehicles is used.