Communication Topology Assignment and Control Co-design for Vehicle Platoons in LTE-V2V Network

In this study, we investigate the problem of inter-vehicle communication topology (IVCT) assignment and control for vehicular platoons in LTE-V2V networks based on the cooperative awareness message dissemination mechanism. A sampled-data feedback controller is proposed for platoons to eliminate the effect of stochastic packet dropouts and external disturbance, where the controller gain depends on the IVCT. To guarantee the stability requirement of a platoon with the minimized cost function, a unified control framework is established to jointly determine the optimal IVCT from all the available ones and the associated feedback controller gain. This co-design procedure is based on the optimal control and dynamic programming technique, where both fixed and periodic switching IVCTs are available. A useful algorithm is proposed to implement the established co-design framework. Furthermore, we present numerical examples to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.