V2X Architecture for Autonomous Platoon Management In Urban Environment

Platooning shows the potential to increase the efficiency and safety of future road traffic. Many researches illustrate its efficiency in highway scenarios where it is restricted to one lane. However, the biggest challenges lies in urban environments. Indeed, they are characterized by low-speed limits, intersections, traffic lights, buildings, vulnerable users..etc. We propose in this paper an Edge Cloud Vehicle-to-everything (V2X) architecture for full dynamic Platoon management in urban environments. We describe in this paper the overall phases of a Platoon, while considering the Cooperative Adaptive Cruise Control (C-ACC) function and the traffic light intersection.We focused in this paper on two main contributions: First, the V2X exchanges; indeed we created a new type of Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) message called ECEmessages based on the Cooperative-ITS (C-ITS) message structure as Cooperative Awareness Message (CAM), Decentralized Environmental Notification Message (DENM), Signal Phase and Timing (SPAT), and Map message (MAP).Then, in order to test the effectiveness of our proposal, we used the Gazebo ROS simulator. We performed the performance evaluations of the proposal by providing a mapping between the importance of the V2X communications, which is measured in terms of latency and reliability, and of the platoon, which is measured in terms of achievable inter-distance between vehicles.