Vehicle Following Control via V2V SIMO Communications Using MBD Approach

Autonomous vehicle systems have been significantly increasing in design complexity, including precise control, reliable communications, and data security. This paper presents a Model-Based Design (MBD) framework on MATLAB/Simulink to integrate the vehicle model, Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) communication model, and autonomous driving scenario model. A vehicle-following control model is demonstrated to maneuver a follower vehicle using locations and velocities of the leader vehicle sent via V2V. The vehicle model consists of Time to Collision (TTC), velocity decision control, path-following control, and vehicle dynamics. The follower vehicle decision is modeled by MathWorks Stateflow considering the important factors including velocities, positions, lanes, obstacles, and buildings that effect V2V communication efficiency. Simulink Design Verifier which is a formal verification tool was then used to verify the TTC, velocity decision, and path following control. The test coverage analysis and test harness were repeated to generate test patterns with 100% coverage results. The experiments were done under the following communications and environmental conditions: single-input-single-output (SISO) without buildings, SISO with buildings, and single-input-multiple-output (SIMO) with buildings. The resulting communication packet delivery ratios were 100%, 95.32%, and 99.91%, respectively. This reveals that the proposed method can effectively model the vehicle following control and autonomous driving scenario including the effects of V2V communications efficiencies.