Vehicles platoon control in vanets with capacity limitation and packet dropouts

This paper investigates scheduling and control co-deign of vehicle platoons subject to packet dropouts and communication capacity limitation. Each vehicle is modeled as a switching system with multiple modes according to the packet dropouts status and network access status. A scheduling control co-design algorithm is established based on switching system theory. The co-design algorithm is derived by introducing a binary function to resolve the communication conflicts and by using a switching controller to remove the effect of packet dropouts and guarantee the string stability of the platoon. Numerical simulations and experiments with laboratory-scale Arduino cars have demonstrated the effectiveness of the presented methodology.