Investigating the Latency Dynamics in Vehicular Platooning Networks

In our urbanized and technologically advanced world, the integration of vehicular platoons is crucial for smart city development, particularly due to the need for low latency in applications with high sensitivity to timing, such as real-time accident response coordination. This paper focuses on investigating the interplay of various parameters within the platoon structure, revealing a clear correlation between platoon size, road layout, and network latency. We derive results showing that large platoon sizes and complex road layouts lead to increased delays, primarily due to packet queuing and processing. Additionally, our research identifies athreshold in inter-vehicle distance, where surpassing it results in a noteworthy spike in latency. We utilize the MininetWiFi emulator and the SUMO simulator and build a holistic dashboard to enable a systematic exploration of the networkrelated aspects under different configuration scenarios. Overall, our findings underscore the essential need for dynamic routing protocols tailored to address the unique challenges of vehicular platooning networks.