V2V Network Topologies for Vehicle Platoons with Cooperative State Variable Feedback Control

This paper aims to study and compare the effect of V2V network topology on vehicle platooning applications, with the objective of maintaining inter-vehicular spacing at all times. The platoon is formulated as a cooperative state variable feedback control problem with constant spacing policy and homogenous agents. The communication topologies considered include predecessor-following (PF), bidirectional (BD), predecessor-following-leader (PFL), bidirectional-leader (BDL), two-predecessor-following (TPF), and two-predecessor-following-leader (TPFL). Simulation analysis is performed under normal operations and when a disturbance occurs in one of the follower vehicles. The effect of the coupling gain is also discussed. For large platoons under normal conditions, more complex topologies, such as TPFL, BDL, and PFL, provide better performance in terms of platoon response. The propagation of disturbance in upstream and/or downstream directions is observed for certain topologies. Increasing the coupling gain can improve the system response of the platoon but also requires more control effort.