In-vehicle sensor-assisted platoon formation by utilizing vehicular communications

These days, vehicles are equipped with in-vehicle sensors so that they can collect the situation-related information, such as velocity, heading, and position. From the viewpoint of intelligent transportation system, platooning is getting more attention because of its advantages of increased road capacity, fuel saving, safety, and so on. In this article, we propose a mechanism that allows vehicles to form platoons based on their own and 1-hop neighbors’ sensory information obtained from vehicular communications. Within a platoon, the front vehicle is the leader whose role is leading the platoon, so the stability of the leader is the most critical performance factor of platooning. To achieve this, we propose to use relative mobility information of vehicles computed from the sensory information for the leader election. The performance of our platooning mechanism is evaluated by carrying out ns-3-based simulations, especially from the perspective of leader stability and road capacity.