String Stability Analysis of Cooperative Adaptive Cruise Control under Jamming Attacks

Cooperative Adaptive Cruise Control (CACC) is considered as a key enabling technology to automatically regulate the inter-vehicle distances in a vehicle platooning while maintaining the string stability. Although the cyber and physical parts in the existing CACC systems are integrated in one control framework, the research on realistic modeling and security issues of these systems are still largely open. A good modeling of cyber characteristics and awareness of cyber attacks impact on the CACC operation leads to a better understanding of system design and defense mechanisms. In this paper, we conduct a comprehensive analysis on the vehicle string stability by considering a realistic wireless channel under a mobile reactive jamming attack. We examine the stability of the platoon under attacks by conducting extensive simulations for a wide range of realworld lead vehicle’s acceleration profiles. We utilize timedomain definition of string stability to delineate the impact of the jamming attacks on the CACC system’s functionality and string stability. We also examine the attacker’s possible locations at which it can destabilize the string.