Data Synchronization with Artificial Delay in Cooperative Adaptive Cruise Control Based on One-Vehicle Look-Ahead Communication

Cooperative adaptive cruise control systems are utilized to decrease inter-vehicle distances (IVDs) in vehicle platoons by using wireless communication. Leader-follower architecture is designed to compensate for the communication time delay by using the Smith predictor (SP) and further decrease the IVDs. However, the leader-follower architecture creates a need of adding feedback communication, which has drawbacks such as higher communication traffic. This study proposes a novel one-vehicle look-ahead architecture without feedback communication with introducing artificial delay in addition to SP. Simulation results show that the proposed method provides the same accel-eration and IVD responses as the leader-follower architecture, other than the additional artificial delay in all the vehicles in the platoon.