Constant Time-Headway Spacing Policy with Limited Communication Range for Discrete Time Platoon Systems

We present a study of the scaling properties of the interconnection of n agents (e.g. vehicles) through an r-lookahead network. These networks are considered as a possible implementation for vehicle platooning, although we do not make any assumptions on what the agents represent, and we assume them to be linear time invariant (LTI) discrete time systems, locally controlled by an LTI controller. In particular, we show that the r-lookahead topology gives rise to dynamics which can be studied from the roots of polynomials with transfer functions as their coefficients. Through numerical simulations, we study aspects relating the use of lookahead measurements and their effect on the value of a time headway constant needed for the scalability property known as string stability.