Event-driven intermittent control for vehicle platooning over vehicular ad-hoc networks

This article is concerned with the problem of vehicle platooning control over vehicular ad-hoc networks (VANETs). Compared with the existing platooning control strategies, an event-driven intermittent control method is developed to reduce control costs and extend the operating life of controllers while ensuring the desired platooning performance. By establishing suitable boundary functions and Lyapunov function, the control input is determined according to the relationship among the trajectories of these functions. Thereafter, sufficient conditions for platooning control performance analysis are derived by a set of linear matrix inequalities. Wherein, the vehicle platooning based on intermittent control is obtained to maintain the desired inter-vehicle distance and a uniform speed in the platoon. Furthermore, a simple optimization algorithm is constructed to calculate the smallest upper bound on tracking errors. Finally, several simulations based on different topologies are provided to verify the validity of the proposed method.