Communication Resources Management Based on Spectrum Sensing for Vehicle Platooning

Vehicle platoon is a group of vehicles moving in the same direction at a certain speed while maintaining a stable inter-vehicle distance, and so the vehicles are closely connected with each other in a virtual way. While a vehicle platoon can improve traffic efficiency, there are some challenges in maintaining communication among platoon members, especially when some vehicles join an existing platoon that includes long-body, heavy-duty or special vehicles. In order to solve this problem, we propose a spectrum sensing scheduling (SSS) scheme for communication resource management in platooning. First, we propose a three-level platoon architecture, which includes the cloud, road side unit (RSU), and vehicles to increase the communication coverage of a platoon and multiple platoons. Second, the spectrum sensing model, platoon control error model, and platoon communication delay model are established for the platoon delay under the SSS scheme. Third, we propose a greedy algorithm for resource allocation, which is based on the SSS scheme and vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communications, to minimize platoon delay. Finally, we simulate platoon delay and platoon safety status of the SSS scheme when some vehicles join an existing platoon. Simulation results show that the proposed SSS scheme reduces the platoon communication delay by around 50% and achieves a smaller platoon error as compared with existing baseline schemes for resource scheduling.