Modelling of communication reliability for platooning applications for intelligent transport system

Vehicle platooning using reliable wireless communication between the member vehicles is a promising method to increase road capacity, lower fuel consumption, and improve safety and driver comfort. IEEE 802.11p is a key communication technology in Vehicular Ad-hoc Networks (VANETs) for Intelligent Transport System (ITS) applications. The broadcasted awareness messages in the wireless communication channel may be used for platooning control, but there are reliability concerns especially in a highly congested network in rush hours. Keeping short inter-vehicle distance requires timeliness and reliability of the underlying exchange of control data in the communication channel. In this paper, we present a novel analytical model of communication reliability between platoon members in a channel shared with other vehicles using ITS. We use a discrete time M/G/1 queue model for occurrence of messages in Poisson distribution, and hence for the estimation of the Packet Reception Probability between the platoon members. We have evaluated the model for different vehicular densities, message rate and data rate with network simulations. Our results show that the Packet Reception Rate (PRR) from the model closely matches the simulation results. Based on PRR we estimate probability of missing packet in consecutive period of transmission. This model opens new opportunities to improve and evaluate the platooning control algorithms.