Collision-Aware Communication for Intersection Management of Automated Vehicles

Journal article, 2018

Intersection management of automated vehicles relies on wireless communication, whereby communication resources should be allocated to vehicles while maintaining safety. We present a collision-aware resource allocation (CARA) strategy for coordination of automated and connected vehicles by a centralized intersection manager. The proposed strategy is based on a self-triggered approach and proactively reduces the risk of channel congestion by only assigning communication resources to vehicles that are in critical configurations, i.e., when there is a risk for a future collision. Compared with collision-agnostic communication strategies, typically considered for automated intersection management, the CARA strategy aims to bridge the gap between control, sensing, and communication. It is shown to significantly reduce the required amount of communication (albeit with a slight increase in the control cost), without compromising safety. Furthermore, control cost can be reduced by allowing more frequent communication, which we demonstrate through a trade-off analysis between control performance and communication load. Hence, CARA can operate in communication-limited scenarios, but also be modified for scenarios where the control cost is of primary interest.