Evaluating the Effects of Switching Period of Communication Topologies and Delays on Electric Connected Vehicles Stream With Car-Following Theory

Unstable vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communication connections are a vital phenomenon in connected vehicle (CV) environments which lead to the change of communication topologies and delays among electric connected vehicles (ECVs). This paper aims to evaluate the effects of the switching period of communication topology and delay on the dynamic performance and energy consumption of an ECV traffic stream considering the characteristics of car-following (CF) theory. To this end, a communication topology characterization method is developed by using the beacon transmission mechanism, graph theory, and probability theory. Then, a new CF model incorporating the effects of the communication topologies and delays is proposed to capture the interactions under a CV environment. The stability of the proposed model is analyzed by using the perturbation method. Finally, extensive simulations are implemented to be separately discussed by considering the effects of different switching periods of communication topologies and delays.