Platooning meets Beamforming

Platooning is often considered as the example application for cooperative driving. The idea of platooning is to have several vehicles driving in a convoy while being connected using a wireless channel. This channel is used to exchange information about the current position, speed, or desired acceleration. By exploiting especially the information from the vehicle in front, vehicles can maintain a constant inter-vehicle gap of only a few meters at highway speed.

Beamforming is a technique for directional signal transmission or reception and it is a promising concept for vehicular networking applications. First results showed a strong decrease in terms of interference for all road users and further benefits for vehicles within a platoon. In this thesis, we want to further investigate how far an extended possibility for beamforming affects the communication possibilities within a Platoon. This means that a vehicle cannot transmit and receive in one direction only, but in multiple by using multiple arrays for beamforming. To fully utilize beamforming in a platoon, we want to take bidirectional communication within a Platoon into account, e.g. to coordinate braking maneuvers and thus keep the Platoon more stable.

Goals of the thesis

In this thesis, we want to investigate the extensive possibilities of beamforming for platooning. For this, the candidate has to define a protocol that takes advantage of the properties of beamforming for platooning as an application. In doing so, platooning in an urban environment should be considered where platoons have to manage different challenges like intersections, approaching traffic, or traffic lights. Building on Veins, an open-source vehicular network simulation framework that can simulate wireless networks of cars, and Plexe, the platooning extension for Veins, the thesis will afterwards analyze the impact of the defined protocol on platoon properties and on the wireless channel in general. Consequently, different metrics to measure channel characteristics and the platoon properties have to be considered.


C++, Network Simulation, Platooning