Assessment of ZigBee communications efficiency for truck platooning applications

Truck platooning represents an innovative solution to increase fuel efficiency of the freight road transport. This method assumes short gaps between trucks and truck platooning is recommended for obtaining better fuel consumption. However, this may require a specific and/or dedicated infrastructure, since the total length of the convoy may be considerable, with a possible negative impact on the general traffic behaviour: other vehicles would need significantly increased space (and time) to overtake the truck platoon. To solve this situation and allow other vehicles to gradually overtake the platoon a solution is proposed for dynamic platoon formation, based on vehicle-to-vehicle communications. The ZigBee communication technology is proposed to ensure the identification of vehicles that are obstructed by the platoon and a series of laboratory measurements and field tests have been undertaken to assess validity.