Simulation, Analysis, and Comparison of ACC and CACC in Highway Merging Control

We comparatively assess the influence of adaptive cruise control (ACC) and cooperative adaptive cruise control (CACC) systems on highway traffic flow characteristics, with highway merging as an example. The primary goal is to study the design and implementation of vehicle-vehicle/roadside-vehicle communication system, which enhances an ACC system to a CACC one. In addition, the impact of market penetration of ACC/CACC vehicles and controller aggression are also evaluated. Two simulation works are presented. The microscopic study simulates a single ACC/CACC vehicle in cut-in scenario using MATLAB/SIMULINK. Simulation shows that CACC system saves control effort over ACC system. In the macroscopic work we simulate ACC/CACC controlled highway merging with SHIFT language. The results show beneficial effects of communication in both efficiency (average velocity) and cost (braking effort). The higher the market penetration of controlled vehicles the better the system performs. The aggressiveness of controller has mixed influence, which provides a tradeoff between efficiency and safety.