Cellular V2X for Platooning

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 using 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. Communication is usually based on IEEE 802.11p. However, since 802.11p is relying on CSMA/CA, communication does not perform well in congested scenarios and hence it is not scalable to a high number of vehicles on the road. 3GPP C-V2X has introduced a sidelink (in addition to the usual uplink and downlink channels) in Release 14 of LTE. This sidelink allows direct communication between nodes without using an eNodeB (base station). Experiments have shown that, under some conditions, C-V2X can guarantee a reliable link that also meets low latency requirements of a platoon [1,2].

Goals of the thesis

In this thesis, we want to investigate the potentials of C-V2X for platoons. For this, multiple simulation studies will be performed using different scenarios (freeway, urban areas, traffic jams, …) to identify situations where C-V2X outperforms traditional communication using 802.11p. This also includes heterogeneous approaches where 802.11p and C-V2X are used in parallel or depending on the demands a platoon is facing. 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 impact on platoon properties when C-V2X is used to exchange information within the platoon. Consequently, different metrics to measure channel characteristics and the platoon properties have to be considered.

Keywords

C++, Network Simulation, Platooning, Cellular Networks

Literature

[1] Vukadinovic, Vladimir and Bakowski, Krzysztof and Marsch, Patrick and Garcia, Ian Dexter and Xu, Hua and Sybis, Michal and Sroka, Pawel and Wesolowski, Krzysztof and Lister, David and Thibault, Ilaria, “3GPP C-V2X and IEEE 802.11p for Vehicle-to-Vehicle communications in highway platooning scenarios”, Elsevier Ad Hoc Networks, vol. 74, no. 7, pp. 17–29, May 2018. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.adhoc.2018.03.004.

[2] Miguel Sepulcre, Javier Gozalvez, Onur Altintas, and Haris Kremo, “Integration of congestion and awareness control in vehicular networks”, Ad Hoc Networks, vol. 37, pp. 29–43, February 2016 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.adhoc.2015.09.010

Contact

• T. Hardes