Leader tracking in homogeneous vehicle platoons with broadcast delays

For vehicle platoons, the leader following control architecture is known to be capable of achieving string stability while maintaining tight formations. In this paper, we study a variety of schemes where the leader state is available to the other members of the platoon. We show that in some cases it is possible to achieve string stability in the presence of certain amounts of time delay in the leader state reception. We also compare other properties of the different schemes and discuss some of their advantages and disadvantages. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.