Infrastructure aided networking and traffic management for autonomous transportation

Traffic management mechanisms for autonomous vehicular transportation systems are designed to regulate vehicular topological layouts and mobility patterns to form robust data communication networks while guaranteeing vehicular throughput rates. To enhance the performance of the underlying wireless communications networking operations, this system would be aided by the deployment of an information network infrastructure that consists of Road Side Units (RSUs). In this paper, we study the design of an RSU-aided autonomous vehicular network that incorporates both data networking and traffic management dimensions. We investigate the inter-relationships that characterize the joint design of vehicular ad hoc networking control mechanisms and cost-effective RSU backbone network. We configure vehicles into platoon structures in aiming to guarantee a robust dissemination of data message flows. An efficient algorithm is developed to determine the optimal settings of platoon parameters and RSU locations across a highway. The result is used to demonstrate the fundamental design tradeoffs to be made when considering performance metrics that involve vehicular throughput rates, infrastructure deployment costs, and the reliability of wireless communications networking.