Improving Platooning Safety with Full Duplex Relaying and Beamforming

Platooning is a promising application in the field of vehicular networks. It has the potential to improve traffic flow, but also road safety. However, unreliable communication has strong negative effects on platoon stability and, thus, safety on roads. To improve reliability, in this work, we propose using multi-hop communication for platooning using the Decode and Forward (DF) Full-Duplex Relaying (FDR) scheme together with beamforming. We use computer simulations to demonstrate that FDR latency has no observable negative effect on string stability or safety even while performing an emergency brake. We further show that this combined approach reaches a constant Packet Delivery Ratio (PDR) of 100 % even in situations with high interference and/or congestion, where traditional approaches fail.