Decentralized V2X Maneuver Sharing and Coordination Message for Cooperative Driving: Analysis in Mixed Traffic

A robust protocol is required to enable maneuver coordination among connected and automated vehicles (CAVs) using vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communication. The main goal of such a cooperative driving application is to increase the safety, efficiency and comfort of future automated vehicles. To this end, a message for priority-based maneuver sharing and coordination for a decentralized protocol is presented and specified in ASN.1 format. The required containers, data elements and the respective message sizes are analyzed and compared to other existing V2X messages. To validate the protocol with the proposed message, a highway merging use case is simulated and evaluated in scenarios with CAVs and mixed traffic. Safety-critical corner cases are also simulated to analyze how the coordination protocol can handle such situations to maintain safety and avoid accidents. The coordination is evaluated with several metrics that consider safety, comfort and efficiency. Finally, research gaps for cooperative driving in mixed traffic scenarios are identified and discussed.