Toward a Standard-Compliant Implementation for Consensus Algorithms in Vehicular Networks

Cooperative Intelligent Transport System (C-ITS) applications require a continuous exchange of information between road users and roadside infrastructures. In this regard, distributed consensus algorithms can play an essential role in the definition of the information exchange rules between an ITS station and its neighbors. Although the consensus approach for networked systems is well-established, the efficiency of consensus methods under real-world vehicular communication constraints is largely unknown. This paper provides an ITS standard-compliant framework for analysis of consensus algorithms in vehicular networks with an emphasis on the role of robustness to changes in network topology in highly dynamic and dense environments. Our simulations reveal that in regular traffic conditions, the implemented consensus algorithm is able to achieve good performances in terms of both convergence time and needed consensus iterations. However, numerical results demonstrate that under dense and high- mobility traffic conditions the frequent exchange of large amounts of range information increases the Channel Busy Ratio (CBR) of the vehicular network and reduces the effectiveness of the algorithm as well.