Scalable stability analysis on large connected vehicle systems subject to stochastic communication delays

In this paper large connected vehicle systems are analyzed where vehicles utilize vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communication to control their longitudinal motion. It is shown that packet drops in communication channels introduce stochastic delay variations in the feedback loops. Scalable methods are developed to evaluate stability and disturbance attenuation while utilizing the mean, second moment, and covariance dynamics in open chain and closed ring configurations. The stability results are summarized using stability diagrams in the plane of the control parameters while varying the packet delivery ratio and the number of vehicles. Also, the relationship between the stability of different configurations is characterized. The results emphasize the feasibility of V2V communication-based control in improving traffic flow.