Design and Evaluation of V2X Communication Protocols for Cooperatively Interacting Automobiles

Abstract

This chapter studies two key communication services for the support of cooperative driving capabilities using Vehicle-to-Everything (V2X) communications: sensor data sharing and maneuver coordination. Based on the current state of the art in research and pre-standardization of V2X communications, we enhance the protocol design for both services and assess their performance by discrete-event simulations in highway and city scenarios. The first part of this chapter addresses the performance improvement of sensor data sharing by two complementary strategies. The shared sensor data are adapted to the available resources on the used channel. Furthermore, the redundancy of the transmitted information is reduced to lower the load on the wireless channel, whereas several approaches are proposed and assessed. The second part of the chapter analyzes cooperative maneuver coordination protocols. We propose a distributed approach based on the explicit exchange of V2X messages, which introduces priorities in maneuver coordination and studies several communication patterns for the negotiation and coordination of maneuvers among two and more vehicles. The results demonstrate the potential of V2X communications for automated driving, showcase several approaches for enhancements of sensor data sharing and maneuver coordination, and indicate the performance of these enhancements.