In order to further improve the braking performance of the nonlinear antilock braking system (ABS), an improved global sliding mode control scheme is presented. First, a nonlinear global sliding mode surface is designed. The method can eliminate the reaching phase compared with conventional linear sliding mode surface, and guarantee the system robustness during the whole control process. Then, a novel control law is proposed to satisfy the sliding mode reaching condition, and the theoretical proof is given. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed global sliding mode control scheme enables the wheel slip-ratio to converge to optimal value quickly with the small oscillation, and has relatively short braking distance and braking time, which is very suitable to prevent the wheel from being locked during braking. The proposed global sliding mode control scheme is verified by joint simulation using MATLAB and CarSim, and shows good braking performance when the car is driving under extreme road conditions, which indicates the effectiveness of the proposed sliding mode control scheme. INDEX TERMS Antilock braking system (ABS), global sliding mode control, braking performance, slipratio, MATLAB and CarSim HONGWEI WANG was born in Tieling, Liaoning, China, in 1983. She received the B.S. degree in electrical engineering and automation from the Liaoning University of Technology, China, in 2004 and the B.S. degree in control theory and control engineering from the Northeastern University, China, in 2006 and the Ph.D. degree in control theory and control engineering from the Northeastern University, China, in 2009. Since 2009, she is currently an assistant professor with the school of control engineering, Northeastern University at Qinhuangdao. She has published about 40 papers, including 20 journal papers and one book chapter. Her research interests include vehicle safety control, sliding mode control, intelligent control and prediction control. SHAOWEN WU is currently pursuing the B.S. degree with Northeastern University at Qinhuangdao, Qinhuangdao, Hebei, China. He works with Hongwei Wang as a Student Researcher. His current research interests include robust control and intelligent control.