Investigation and Integration of Communication Technologies for Multiple Connected and Automated Vehicle (CAV) Prototypes

With the growing popularity and advancements in automation technology, Connected and Automated Vehicles (CAVs) have become the pinnacle of ground-vehicle transportation. Connectivity has the potential to allow all vehicles—new or old, automated or non-automated—to communicate with each other at all times and greatly reduce the possibility of a multi-vehicle collision. This project sought to achieve a better understanding of CAV communication technologies by attempting to design, integrate, test, and validate a vehicular ad-hoc network (VANET) amongst three automated ground-vehicle prototypes. The end goal was to determine what current technology best satisfies Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) communication with a real-time physical demonstration. Although different technologies, such as dedicated short-range communication (DSRC) and cellular vehicle to everything (C-V2X) were initially investigated, due to time and budget constraints, a FreeWave ZumLink Z9-PE DEVKIT (900 MHz radio) was used to create a wireless network amongst the ground-vehicle prototypes. The initial testing to create a wireless network was successful and demonstrated but creating a true VANET was unsuccessful as the radios communicate strictly peer to peer. Future work needed to complete the simulated VANET includes programming the ZumLink radios to send and receive data using message queuing telemetry transport (MQTT) protocol to share data amongst multiple vehicles, as well as programming the vehicle controller to send and receive data utilizing terminal control protocol (TCP) to ensure no data loss and all data is communicated in correct sequence.