Error Analysis and Performance Evaluation of a Future-Trajectory-Based Cooperative Collision Warning System

This paper focuses on the robustness and reliability of a future-trajectory-based cooperative collision warning system (CCWS), which estimates and communicates vehicle positions and predicts and processes future trajectories for collision decision making. The feasibility of the system design has been demonstrated in previous work, and this paper analyzes the error propagation and its impact on detection performance. The reliability of the CCWS heavily depends on the reliability of the differential Global Positioning System (DGPS)-based positioning system and the reliability of intervehicle communication. This paper uses the Kalman filter technique to statistically characterize the errors in position estimation and trajectory prediction, incorporates communication errors as part of the prediction error, and accordingly determines the probability of conflicts and the quality of the detection performance. Results with experimental data are presented to illustrate the error propagation and to demonstrate the reliability of the system.