Performance analysis and optimization of the joining protocol for a platoon of vehicles

Platooning of vehicles allows to saving energy and increasing safety provided that there are reliable wireless communication protocols. In this paper, the optimization of the medium access control (MAC) protocol based on IEEE 802.11e for the platoon joining is investigated. The exchange of prosperous dynamic information among vehicules through certain bounded and closed-fitting timeout windows is challenging. On the one side, safe and secure joining of vehicles to a platoon is time-consuming and in the actual speed of the vehicles may be very difficult. On the other side, the decrease in joining timeout windows results in rising of joining failure. The analytical characterization of the appropriate timeout windows, which is dependent on the rate of exchange messages to request and verify joining, is proposed. By using such a new characterization, the estimation of closed-fitting timeout windows for joining is achieved based on the rate of transferred joining messages. Numerical results show that regular joining timeout windows suffer unacceptable delay for platooning. By contrast, adaptive optimized timeout windows reduce delay of communication. It is concluded that the new optimization proposed in this paper can potentially reduce energy consumption of vehicles and increase safety.