Analysis of a platooned car-following model with different inter-platoon communication levels

Abstract: Despite growing interest in vehicle platooning research, the effect of communication capability between platoons is not investigated to a depth of depth. In this paper, we extend a single-platoon car-following (CF) model to multi-platoon CF models for connected and autonomous vehicles (CAVs) with different inter-platoon communication capabilities. Specifically, we consider forward and backward connection availabilities with delays between platoons. Using linear stability analysis, we discovered that for identical platoons, stability increases with platoon size and connection availabilities and decreases exponentially with large delay. With maximum acceleration and emergency braking constraints integrated into the models, we performed simulations for various cases of CAV platoons and mixed autonomy with human-driven vehicles (HDVs). The simulation results for CAV platoons are consistent with theoretical analysis. The mixed autonomy experiments demonstrate that in the ring road scenario, CAV platoons can stabilize HDVs without adaptions, and the effect of distribution is marginal. Overall, this paper provides valuable insights for designing vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communications and managing mixed traffic scenarios.