Distributed and Adaptive Message Dissemination for Vehicle Platooning in Hybrid Traffic

In vehicular networks, vehicle in the platooning relies on dissemination of beacons to perceive the status of neighbor vehicles and then take control low to maintain a constant inter-vehicle distance. Vehicle platooning communication has stringent high-reliability and low-latency requirements. In this paper, we focus on resource allocation strategies for vehicle platoons in hybrid scenarios. First, we propose a two-dimensional Markov model to describe the channel contention (back-off) processes for platoons and individual vehicles. Based on the model, we then can derive the transmission probabilities of beacons and event messages for platoons and individual vehicles. Finally, we design a distributed and adaptive beacon control scheme to determine the optimal beacon rates for vehicles in the platoons. The simulation results demonstrate that our efforts substantially enhance platooning communication reliability and ensure optimal performance for vehicle safety applications.