Co-design of controller and communication topology for vehicular platooning

Small inter-vehicle distances can increase traffic throughput on highways. Human drivers are not able to drive safely under such conditions. To this aim, cooperative adaptive cruise control (CACC) systems have been developed, which require vehicles to communicate with each other through a wireless communication network. By communicating control-relevant information, the vehicles equipped with the CACC system are able to react more quickly to disturbances caused by preceding vehicles and, therefore, are able to maintain the desired (small) inter-vehicle distance while avoiding string instability. String stability relates to the propagation of the effect of disturbance on system states over the vehicle string. Commonly used approaches to design controllers yielding string stability, involve an iterative process requiring an a priori designed controller with a priori defined communication topology. The main contribution of this paper is to propose a synthesis strategy for both local controllers and the communication structure, while guaranteeing string stability for infinite-length vehicular strings. The obtained results are illustrated by model-based case studies.