Connected vehicle driving safety enhancement via dynamic communication channel selection

Vehicle-to-Vehicle communication can cogently improve traffic safety because it grants drivers better situational awareness and strengthens inter-cooperation among them. However, the current policy obliges the safety-critical messages, i.e., Basic Safety Messages (BSMs) and Event Safety Messages (ESMs), to be transmitted exclusively in one single channel over the Dedicated Short-Range Communication (DSRC) spectrum, which may incur severe channel congestions, intolerable communication delays, and higher accident probabilities. To alleviate the channel congestion, popular measures focus on adaptively adjusting the transmission parameters, e.g., packet generating rate. However, due to the narrow bandwidth of a single channel, these methods can hardly ensure timely delivery of critical safety-related messages when the density of DSRC-enabled vehicles becomes high. Instead of sticking to only one single channel, this paper applies a dynamic channel selection algorithm to thoroughly exploit the entire DSRC band resource and reduce the transmission delay. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the utilized algorithm, we conduct experiments under two representative scenarios, i.e., a cooperative adaptive cruise control scenario and a run-the-red-light scenario at an intersection. Experimental results show that the transmission delays of both the BSMs and the ESMs could be effectively reduced, yielding an improved vehicle platoon control accuracy, string stability, and collision avoidance performance.