Abnormal communication internet-connected vehicle platoon dynamical modeling and characteristics study

With the advent of the vehicle interconnection era, all the internet-connected vehicles (i.e. ICVs) can communicate with each other through the whole platoon, and great changes of the dynamical motion characteristics in traffic flow system is happening. The wireless communication system plays more and more important roles to keep traffic flow system stable and safe. However, communication failure is a common and unevitable phenomenon, and an ICV in a platoon will inevitably lose its connection with other vehicles sometimes. So it is necessary and meaningful to study ICV’s dynamical characteristics under abnormal communication conditions. The study firstly analyzed the information exchange mechanism among ICVs and classify communication failure into three modes. Secondly, by considering normal and abnormal communication conditions, a car-following model for internet-connected vehicle flows with bidirectional mean expected velocity field was proposed. Thirdly, the ICV platoon system stable state condition was deduced based on linear stability theory. Finally, full simulation logical scenarios were set to support the theoretical analysis results considering the ICV system’s stability and communication states comprehensively. As for the abnormal communication state simulations, the leading vehicle, last vehicle, and middle vehicle communication failure scenarios were selected as typical examples. The study conclusions are (i) for bidirectional communication ICV platoon system, forward-looking and backward-looking mean expected velocity field terms show different influences on its stability, (ii) sudden abnormal communication failures can dramatically destroy the vehicle platoon stability, and (iii) different vehicle position communication failure has different effects on the system stability.