Damping Periodic Stop-and-go Waves in Connected Vehicle Environments

Oscillations caused by stop-and go waves lead to high energy consumption of the vehicles. In this study, we explore periodic stop-and-go waves that cause frequent accelerations and decelerations. We first analyze the characteristics of the stop-and-go waves and then design a system to estimate required parameters such as desired speed, maximum desired gap, and minimum desired gap. In addition, we present a Proportional-Integral (PI) controller to track the estimated desired speed and regulate vehicles' gaps. The proposed controller is compatible with existing adaptive cruise control (ACC) systems and can be deployed as an advanced driver assistance system (ADAS) feature. We evaluated the performance using a simulated model of a highway on-ramp with ramp metering. The meter acts as an infrastructure bottleneck and creates a periodic stop-and-go wave. The simulation results indicated that the proposed system can effectively dissipate stop-and-go waves and reduce total power request up to 35.4%.