Connected Cruise Control With Automotive Passive Optical Network Communication Limited to Cross-Vehicle Loop Delays

Connected cruise control (CCC) is an advanced system that extends traditional cruise control by incorporating vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communications. However, as such technologies continue to iterate, conventional intra-vehicle communication systems struggle to meet escalating bandwidth demands, while cross-vehicle communication delays degrade CCC’s closed-loop performance and increase collision risks. Motivated by these issues, a zone-centralized architecture integrating automotive passive optical networks and cellular V2X is proposed to reduce the upper bounds of loop delays compared to those in Ethernet-based domain-centralized systems. A novel cross-vehicle loop delay analysis framework is introduced to characterize communication system uncertainties with provable upper bounds. Building on this, a scheduling and control coordination scheme is developed to mitigate the cross-vehicle loop delays in intra-vehicle and inter-vehicle communications, while ensuring precise tracking platoon motion. For scheduling, a fraction-type basic period methodology and an earliest-deadline-priority strategy are employed to manage deterministic communications and alleviate the cross-vehicle loop delays. In terms of control, a delay-robust model predictive control approach is applied for decision-making and an H <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\infty $</tex-math> </inline-formula> -based linear quadratic regulator technique is used for vehicle longitudinal acceleration tracking while combating vehicle communication delays. Finally, the proposed scheduling and control coordination scheme undergoes validation across diverse driving scenarios, demonstrating its effectiveness and robustness through hardware-in-the-loop verification.