Autonomous platoon formation for VANET-enabled vehicles

Platooning is an important mechanism to increase the capacity of roads and the efficiency of driving. Vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) can enhance the performance of platoons. In this paper, a novel mechanism that selects a leader vehicle autonomously for a platoon based on relative mobility information of vehicles is proposed for overcoming the restriction on vehicles and for facilitating platoons. For the performance evaluation of our proposed mechanism, the network simulator NS-3 is utilized. The effectiveness of our mechanism is shown by the simulation results such as improved highway capacity.
¹