Spacing Control of Cooperative Adaptive Cruise Control Vehicle Platoon

One of the solutions increasing roadway capacity is to automatically organize a vehicle grouping traveling in a platoon in order to achieve optimizes inter-vehicle spacing between successive two vehicles. This paper proposes a spacing control algorithm for Cooperative adaptive cruise control (CACC) technology in a platoon, using on-board sensors and considers communication with the preceding vehicle only. An important evaluation in CACC controller design is string stability which is analyzed by using a frequency-domain approach and Nyquist diagram. The main goal of platoon control is to maintain the desired distance from front vehicles of the platoon based on the constant time headway policy while guaranteeing string stability requirements. The results of the numerical simulations have demonstrated the effectiveness and applicability of the proposed approach for vehicle platoons.