Event-triggered cooperative control of networked vehicle platoons under intermittent communication

Xin Wen; Tingting Yu; Ruibing Li; Xin Wen; Tingting Yu; Ruibing Li

doi:10.3934/nhm.2026074

Networks and Heterogeneous Media

2026, Volume 21, Issue 5: 1968-1986. doi: 10.3934/nhm.2026074

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Event-triggered cooperative control of networked vehicle platoons under intermittent communication

1.
School of Mathematics and Statistics, Heilongjiang University, Harbin 150080, China
2.
School of Automation, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing 100081, China
3.
Heilongjiang Provincial Key Laboratory of the Theory and Computation of Complex Systems, Harbin 150080, China

Received: 11 August 2026 Revised: 11 September 2026 Accepted: 24 September 2026 Published: 08 October 2026

This work addresses the consensus tracking problem for connected vehicle systems under time-varying communication topologies and persistent intermittent communication. A coordinated event-triggered protocol relying only on local and neighboring vehicle information is developed to enhance resilience against channel blockages while reducing bandwidth usage and energy consumption. The communication digraph switches within a finite set of directed graphs, each containing a spanning tree rooted at the lead vehicle. By constructing a piecewise Lyapunov functional and applying the average dwell-time technique, sufficient conditions in terms of linear matrix inequalities are derived to guarantee exponential stability and leader-following consensus in the tracking error dynamics. The proposed scheme is proven to exclude Zeno behavior, ensuring a positive lower bound on inter event intervals. Simulation results confirm the effectiveness and superiority of the strategy under simultaneous switching topologies and intermittent communication.
- connected vehicle systems,
- switching topologies,
- intermittent communication,
- event-triggered control,
- leader-follower consensus
Citation: Xin Wen, Tingting Yu, Ruibing Li. Event-triggered cooperative control of networked vehicle platoons under intermittent communication[J]. Networks and Heterogeneous Media, 2026, 21(5): 1968-1986. doi: 10.3934/nhm.2026074

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Abstract

This work addresses the consensus tracking problem for connected vehicle systems under time-varying communication topologies and persistent intermittent communication. A coordinated event-triggered protocol relying only on local and neighboring vehicle information is developed to enhance resilience against channel blockages while reducing bandwidth usage and energy consumption. The communication digraph switches within a finite set of directed graphs, each containing a spanning tree rooted at the lead vehicle. By constructing a piecewise Lyapunov functional and applying the average dwell-time technique, sufficient conditions in terms of linear matrix inequalities are derived to guarantee exponential stability and leader-following consensus in the tracking error dynamics. The proposed scheme is proven to exclude Zeno behavior, ensuring a positive lower bound on inter event intervals. Simulation results confirm the effectiveness and superiority of the strategy under simultaneous switching topologies and intermittent communication.

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