Context Aware Beaconing for Platoons

Platooning is often considered as the example application for cooperative driving. The idea of platooning is to have several vehicles driving in a convoy while being connected by a wireless channel. This channel is used to exchange information about the current position, speed, or desired acceleration. By exploiting especially the information from the vehicle in front, vehicles can maintain a constant inter-vehicle gap of only a few meters at highway speed. The information is periodically transmitted in the form of wireless beacons. Communication is usually based on IEEE 802.11p and beacons are transmitted with a frequency of 10 Hz. Different publications [1,2] have shown that static beaconing cannot be used for platooning in large scenarios, since the communication becomes unreliable. Besides the known problems for platooning applications, another problem is the dissemination of high priority messages like hazard warnings in such scenarios. Since the channel might already very busy, these messages might get lost or only received with a huge delay, which is a big safety problem.

Goals of the thesis

In this thesis, we want to investigate different ways to increase the probability that high priority beacons are received in high dense platooning scenarios. The outcome will be a protocol that changes the beaconing of platoon members according to a given context, e.g., high vehicle densities, message priorities, dissemination strategies, or beaconing rates. Building on Veins, an open-source vehicular network simulation framework that can simulate wireless networks of cars, and Plexe, the platooning extension for Veins, the thesis will analyze the suggested protocol regarding the impact on platoon properties, but also regard high priority messages. The evaluation will be done considering an urban scenario, e.g, an intersection that is surrounded by buildings. Consequently, different metrics to measure different channel characteristics and platoon properties have to be considered.

Keywords

C++, Network Simulation, Platooning

Literature

[1] M. Segata, B. Bloessl, S. Joerer, C. Sommer, M. Gerla, R. Lo Cigno, and F. Dressler, “Towards Communication Strategies for Platooning: Simulative and Experimental Evaluation,” IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology, 2015, in print, available online https://doi.org/10.1109/TVT.2015.2489459

[2] Tobias Hardes and Christoph Sommer, “Towards Heterogeneous Communication Strategies for Urban Platooning at Intersections,” Proceedings of 11th IEEE Vehicular Networking Conference (VNC 2019), Los Angeles, CA, December 2019, pp. 322–329 https://doi.org/10.1109/VNC48660.2019.9062835

Contact

• T. Hardes