DE, Vehicles Platooning, eRSU-assisted platooning

Use Case Category: Vehicles Platooning
User Story: eRSU-assisted platooning
Location: German (DE) trial site

According to 3GPP TS 22.186 R16, Vehicles Platooning “enables the vehicles to dynamically form a group travelling together. All the vehicles in the platoon receive periodic data from the leading vehicle, in order to carry on platoon operations. This information allows the distance between vehicles to become extremely small, i.e., the gap distance translated to time can be very low (sub second). Platooning applications may allow the vehicles following to be autonomously driven”.

User Story: eRSU-assisted platooning

In this use case, a platoon of 3 AVs is operating along a road. The platoon approaches a truck. At 500m to a junction, the truck signals its intention to take the right turn and slows down.

A local EDM instance deployed on an eRSU located at the junction, detects the truck’s changing velocity and trajectory through learned pattern recognition from local sensor data. It updates the global map and notifies the centralized traffic management & planning applications through eRSU’s upstream interfaces.

The platoon leader detects a potential collision as it approaches the truck and request the EDM from the eRSU. The route planning service in the eRSU detects a possible overtaking manoeuvre due to low traffic ahead and possibly adapted green light phase for extended free flow based on information from traffic management system.

Based on the information provided by the eRSU and its services, the platoon leader initiates an overtaking manoeuvre by communicating context data (location, speed, LDM) to the eRSU. Using the EDM, the route planning service in the eRSU formulates the overtaking manoeuvre and communicates the overtaking plan to the platoon leader.

During the overtaking manoeuvre, the platoon enters the coverage of an eRSU of another provider. This results in eRSU handover with upstream gateway relocation from current MNO’s eNB/gNB to new MNO’s. In effect, the ITS instances and context on source eRSU must be handed over to the new eRSU. At mobile network level, this handover is carried out with handover protocol between the MNOs’ core networks. At application level, resource and service allocation are orchestrated by the centralized ITS service entities, which are made aware of mobile network and MEC provisioning.