Joint Optimization of Communication Latency and Platoon Control Based on Uplink RSMA for Future V2X Networks

As an effective solution to address road congestion and improve traffic efficiency, vehicle platooning has received a lot of attention in recent years. However, vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communication latency can largely impact on the performance of vehicle platooning, which has not been well investigated. Rate-splitting multiple access (RSMA), as one of the promising technologies for 6G, holds great potential for application in vehicle platooning to reduce the communication latency and thereby enhance platoon control performance. Motivated by the above considerations, platoon control and communication latency are jointly considered in this paper. We first introduce the communication latency into the vehicle dynamics model, and then derive a distributed model predictive control (DMPC)-based platoon control model. To reduce the communication latency, uplink RSMA is introduced for inter-platoon V2V communication. Since the latency minimization problem is non-convex and challenging to solve directly, we first employ a bisection method to give a latency upper bound and transform the initial problem into a non-convex feasibility problems in each iteration. Subsequently, through theoretical derivation, the bandwidth allocation factor is expressed in terms of transmission power, which reduces the number of optimization variables and transforms the problem into a convex problem. Then we can obtain the optimal solution by solving a convex problem in each iteration. Finally, the simulation results demonstrate that the proposed RSMA significantly outperforms traditional frequency division multiple access (FDMA) and non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA), and can significantly reduce communication latency, enhance platoon control safety, improve driving comfort, and lower the performance requirement on vehicle maximum torque.