Open AccessControl Design, Stability Analysis, and Traffic Flow Implications for Cooperative Adaptive Cruise Control Systems with Compensation of Communication Delay
Author(s) -
Yu Zhang,
Yu Bai,
Jia Hu,
Meng Wang
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
transportation research record
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2169-4052
pISSN - 0361-1981
DOI - 10.1177/0361198120918873
Subject(s) - cooperative adaptive cruise control , control theory (sociology) , stability (learning theory) , cruise control , robustness (evolution) , computer science , control system , compensation (psychology) , traffic flow (computer networking) , adaptive control , control (management) , engineering , computer network , psychology , biochemistry , chemistry , machine learning , artificial intelligence , psychoanalysis , electrical engineering , gene
Communication delay is detrimental to the performance of cooperative adaptive cruise control (CACC) systems. In this paper, we incorporate communication delay explicitly into control design and propose a delay-compensating CACC. In this new CACC system, the semi-constant time gap (Semi-CTG) policy, which is modified on the basis of the widely-used CTG policy, is employed by a linear feedback control law to regulate the spacing error. The semi-CTG policy uses historical information of the predecessor instead of its current information. By doing so, communication delay is fully compensated, which leads to better stability performance. Three stability properties—local stability, string stability, and traffic flow stability—are analyzed. The local stability and string stability of the proposed CACC system are guaranteed with the desired time gap as small as the communication delay. Both theoretical analysis and simulation results show that the delay-compensating CACC has better string stability and traffic flow stability than the widely-used CACC system. Furthermore, the proposed CACC system also shows the potential for improving traffic throughput and fuel efficiency. Robustness of the proposed system against uncertainties of sensor delay and vehicle dynamics is also verified with simulation.