The use of connected and autonomous ground and aerial vehicles is a promising solution to reduce accidents, improve the traffic efficiency, and provide various services ranging from delivery of goods to monitoring. Different from the current connected vehicles and autonomous vehicles, connected and autonomous vehicles (CAVs) combine autonomy and wireless connectivity and use both sensors and communication systems to increase their situational awareness and for their decision-making. However, in order to reap all the benefits of deploying CAVs, one must consider the interconnection between communication, control, and learning mechanisms for the CAV system design. The key goal of this dissertation is, thus, to develop foundational science that can be used for the design, analysis, and optimization of CAV systems while jointly taking into account the synergies among communication, control, and learning systems. First, a joint communication and control system design is developed for non-coordinated CAVs when performing autonomous path tracking. In particular, the maximum time delay requirements are derived to guarantee the stability of the controller when tracking two typical road scenarios (i.e., straight line and circular curve). Tools from optimization theory and risk theory are then used to jointly optimize the control system and power allocation for the communication network so as to maximize the number of vehicular links that meet the controller's delay requirements. Second, the joint control and communication design framework is extended to two coordinated CAVs applications, i.e., CAV platoons and unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) swarms. Third, a distributed machine learning algorithm, i.e., federated learning (FL), is proposed for a swarm of connected and autonomous UAVs to execute tasks, such as coordinated trajectory planning and cooperative target recognition. In particular, a rigorous convergence analysis for FL is performed to show how wireless factors impact the FL convergence performance, and the design of UAV swarm networks is optimized to reduce the convergence time. Fourth, a new FL framework, called dynamic federated proximal (DFP) algorithm, is proposed for designing the autonomous controller of CAVs while considering the mobility of CAVs, the wireless fading channels, as well as the unbalanced and non independent and identically distributed data across CAVs. To improve the convergence of the proposed DFP algorithm, a contract-theoretic incentive mechanism is also proposed. Fifth, a wireless-enabled asynchronous federated learning (AFL) framework is proposed for urban air mobility (UAM) aircraft to collaboratively learn the turbulence prediction model. In particular, to characterize how UAM aircraft leverage wireless connectivity for AFL, a stochastic geometry based spatial model is developed and the wireless connectivity performance is analyzed. Then, a rigorous convergence analysis is performed for the proposed AFL framework to identify how fast the UAM aircraft converge to using the optimal turbulence prediction model. Sixth, based on the concordance order from stochastic ordering theory, a dependence control mechanism is proposed to improve the overall reliability of wireless networks for CAVs. Finally, to determine the optimal cache placement for CAVs, a novel spatio-temporal caching framework is proposed where the notion of graph motifs, i.e., the spatio-temporal communication patterns in wireless networks, is used. In conclusion, the frameworks presented in this dissertation will provide key fundamental guidelines to design, analyze, and optimize CAV systems. / Doctor of Philosophy / The evolution of transportation systems has always been the key to the progress of human societies. Recently, technology advances in sensing, autonomy, computing, and wireless connectivity ushered in the era of connected and autonomous vehicles (CAVs). In essence, CAVs rely on the data collected from sensors and wireless communication systems to automatically make the operation decision. If designed properly, the deployment of CAVs can improve the safety and the driving experience, increase the fuel efficiency and road capacity, as well as provide various services ranging from delivery of goods to monitoring.
To reap all these benefits of deploying CAVs, one must address a number of technique challenges related to the wireless connectivity, autonomy, and autonomous learning for CAV systems. In particular, for CAV connectivity, the challenges include building a low latency and highly reliable network, using proper models for mobile radio channels, and determining the effective content dissemination strategy. At the control level, key considerations include guaranteeing stability and robustness for the controller when faced with measurement errors and wireless imperfections and rapidly adapting the CAV to dynamic environments. Meanwhile, when CAVs use machine learning to complete their tasks (e.g., object detection and environment monitoring), insufficient training data, privacy concerns, communication overhead, and limited energy are among the main challenges.
Therefore, this dissertation develops the foundational science needed to design, analyze, and optimize CAVs while jointly taking into account the challenges within the wireless network, controller, and leaning mechanism design. To this end, various frameworks for the joint communication, control, and learning design and wireless network optimizations are proposed for different CAV applications. The results show that, using the proposed frameworks, the performance of CAVs can be optimized with more reliable communication systems, more stable controller, and improved learning mechanism, enabling intelligent transportation systems for the future smart cities.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:VTETD/oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/104216 |
| Date | 19 July 2021 |
| Creators | Zeng, Tengchan |
| Contributors | Electrical Engineering, Saad, Walid, Yang, Yaling, Southward, Steve C., Reed, Jeffrey H., Stilwell, Daniel J. |
| Publisher | Virginia Tech |
| Source Sets | Virginia Tech Theses and Dissertation |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Dissertation |
| Format | ETD, application/pdf |
| Rights | In Copyright, http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ |
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