V2X-Based Decentralized Cooperative Adaptive Cruise Control in the Vicinity of Intersections

Cooperative driving with V2X communication is widely researched due to its considerable potential to improve the safety and efficiency of road transportation systems. In this paper, a decentralized cooperative adaptive cruise control algorithm using V2X for vehicles in the vicinity of intersections (CACC-VI) is proposed. This algorithm is designed to improve the throughput of intersection by reorganizing the vehicle platoons around it, in consideration of safety, fuel consumption, speed limit, heterogeneous features of vehicles, and passenger comfort. Within a platoon, vehicles try to find the optimal control input by a distributed particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm, in order to reduce tracking errors, while respecting different constraints. A concept of opportunity space is proposed to facilitate platoon reorganization, in which a subplatoon or an individual vehicle can choose to accelerate to join in the preceding platoon or to decelerate to depart from the current one. The main idea is to make full use of the road capacity and to distribute it to most vehicles that are capable to find an accelerating trajectory to get through the intersection within a limited period. The originality of our algorithm is the introduction of a novel application of V2X communication to make the traffic more intelligent, in terms of safety, time saving, and environment friendly.