Acquisition of relative trajectories of surrounding vehicles using GPS and DSRC based V2V communication with lane level resolution

Due to the anticipated benefits of connected vehicle technology, the Intelligent Transportation Systems Joint Program Office (ITSJPO) of the US Department of Transportation continues to emphasize the need for dedicated short range communication (DSRC) based vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) and/or vehicle-toinfrastructure (V2I) communication to enhance driver safety and traffic mobility. To take full advantage of connected vehicle technology in most safety applications, precise vehicle positioning information is needed in addition to V2V communication. Many techniques, such as vision-or sensor-based systems and differential GPS receivers, can obtain the precise absolute position of a vehicle at the expense of cost and complexity. However, some critical safety applications such as merge-assist or lane-change-assist systems require only the relative positions of surrounding vehicles with lane-level resolution so that a given vehicle can differentiate the vehicles in its own lane from the vehicles in adjacent lanes. We have adopted a simple approach to acquire accurate relative trajectories of surrounding vehicles using standard GPS receivers and DSRC-based V2V communication. Using this approach, we have conducted field tests to successfully acquire relative trajectories of vehicles traveling in multiple lanes towards a merging junction with an accuracy less than half of the lane width. The achieved accuracy level of the relative trajectory was sufficient to differentiate vehicles traveling in adjacent lanes of a multiple-lane freeway.