Evaluating Efficiency of Connected and Autonomous Vehicles with Different Communication Topologies

Abstract

Connected and autonomous vehicles (CAV) employ vehicle-to-vehicle communications to safely drive in a platoon with short inter-vehicle distances, which can improve traffic throughput and reduce fuel consumption. With the development of wireless communication technology, more and more information can be used for vehicle controllers. However, is more information better? In this paper, a fuel economy-based performance evaluation index is established for evaluating the efficiency of CAVs driving in a platoon with different communication topologies. Four typical communication topologies that describe the CAV with different amounts of information are studied by the linear controller. The differential evolution algorithm is used to solve the parameters. Due to the increase in information, more control parameters need to be computed, and it is hard to find an optimal solution. So, the simulation results show that CAV with more information did not obtain a better fuel economy.