Interaction-Aware Trajectory Prediction Method Based on Sparse Spatial-Temporal Transformer for Internet of Vehicles

Accurate trajectory prediction plays a crucial role in optimizing the performance of Internet of Vehicles (IoV) systems, reducing data transmission overhead, and enhancing communication network security. However, the expanding sensing range in IoV has led to increasingly complex spatial-temporal interactions, posing significant challenges for future trajectory prediction endeavors. Currently, predominant approaches involve constructing spatial-temporal interactions through various attention mechanisms. Nevertheless, these methods often yield numerous redundant interactions, potentially resulting in unstable predictions and diffuse interactions. Consequently, there is a pressing need to enhance the application of these methods in trajectory prediction within IoV contexts. Motivated by these challenges, our work introduces a sparse spatial-temporal Transformer (SSTT) to predict vehicle trajectories. SSTT consists of two main Transformer modules: the sparse spatial Transformer and the local-global temporal Transformer. We integrate a learnable sparse plugin into the former to minimize extraneous information in spatial interactions. This plugin enables SSTT to focus more effectively on critical interactive neighbor vehicles by optimizing attention weight distribution, thereby enhancing optimization convergence and prediction accuracy. For the latter, local time windows are employed to capture temporal local correlations and extend the attentional receptive field. Experimental results conducted on three real-world datasets demonstrate that SSTT achieves state-of-the-art performance, and even when only 15% of the training data is used, it can still outperform SOAT baselines. This study presents novel ideas and methodologies for advancing trajectory prediction techniques within the IoV paradigm. The code and our model will be available at GitHub.