Video Transmission for Autonomous Truck Platoons using WLAN Broadcast

In a bid to improve economic growth, welfare and safety on highways, the Netherlands has called on number of European Union (EU) states to start implementing innovative ideas for fully autonomous truck platoons which will improve safety, environment and fuel efficiency. As a safety requirement, leading truck must transmit a video stream from front mounted camera to the following trucks. This paper proposes a video broadcast system for this high bandwidth application. Instead of consuming IEEE 802.11p channel, a video stream is broadcasted on publicly available Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN). This system allows multiple receivers to process the stream without a need of intermediate nodes for multi-hop architecture or ground infrastructure. The system is tested on Stuttgart’s highways, therefore real world results of video quality and time delays are given.