Communication delay-aware cooperative adaptive cruise control with dynamic network topologies—A convergence of communication and control

Wireless communication-enabled Cooperative Adaptive Cruise Control (CACC) is expected to improve the safety and traffic capacity of vehicle platoons. Existing CACC considers a conventional communication delay with fixed Vehicular Communication Network (VCN) topologies. However, when the network is under attack, the communication delay may be much higher, and the stability of the system may not be guaranteed. This paper proposes a novel communication Delay Aware CACC with Dynamic Network Topologies (DADNT). The main idea is that for various communication delays, in order to maximize the traffic capacity while guaranteeing stability and minimizing the following error, the CACC should dynamically adjust the VCN network topology to achieve the minimum inter-vehicle spacing. To this end, a multi-objective optimization problem is formulated, and a 3-step Divide-And-Conquer sub-optimal solution (3DAC) is proposed. Simulation results show that with 3DAC, the proposed DADNT with CACC can reduce the inter-vehicle spacing by 5%, 10%, and 14%, respectively, compared with the traditional CACC with fixed one-vehicle, two-vehicle, and three-vehicle look-ahead network topologies, thereby improving the traffic efficiency.