Impact of Unreliable Communication on String Stability of Cooperative Adaptive Cruise Control

Connected and Automated Vehicles (CAV) are a great solution to many of the transportation problems such as congestion. Cooperative adaptive cruise control (CACC) is one of the CAV applications in which the vehicles are connected through wireless communication to coordinate their behavior in the form of a platoon. CACC has many advantages including an increase in safety and road capacity and a decrease in fuel consumption. However, wireless communications introduce network induced imperfections such as transmission delay and packet loss. In this study, the CACC system is modeled as a networked control system, and the impact of these communication uncertainties in individual links on the platoon formation and stability is investigated. The results suggest that packet loss even in one of the links can negatively affect string stability.