Reducing Time Headway for Cooperative Vehicle Following in Platoon via Information Flow Topology

For automated driving vehicles, Adaptive cruise control (ACC) systems of vehicular platoons are designed to provide longitudinal assistance for drivers to improve traffic throughput, enhance safety and reduce workload. As the core of all vehicular platoons, the information flow topology plays a crucial role in various aspects. In this study, we investigate the effects of information flow topology for connected and automated vehicles and provide results on how information flow topology helps reduce employable reducing time headway in platoons. String stability analysis of vehicular platoons has been validated via the Nyquist diagram. It is known that ACC vehicular platoons using a CTHS and availing only embedded devices such as radar beam that need to maintain a high value of time headway for string stability. We show that if Cooperative Adaptive cruise control (CACC) vehicular platoons obtained acceleration of preceding vehicle through the information flow topology that yields a smaller time headway value to maintain string stability. We provide numerical results to corroborate the results in this paper. DOI: 10.61416/ceai.v26i2.8834