Lane data sharing in a vehicle-to-vehicle safety system

Abstract

A transponder and system are described for sharing vehicle lane data in a vehicle-to-vehicle safety system. It generates and broadcasts internally generated location points; and receives, processes and stores lane data received from other equipped vehicles. Physical lanes are represented by a sequence of logical lanes. Both the internal and external location points are aggregated into logical lanes. These logical lanes in turn are shared between vehicles via requests and replies. Each vehicle, within a temporary range, is considered a distinct vehicle. For each logical lane separate counts are maintained for the number of distinct vehicles that provided internal data, provided internal data shared once, and total data shared more than once. Internal data continues to aggregate until the logical lane changes. Total shared data is capped at a maximum of internal counted distinct vehicles and received distinct vehicle counts, to avoid counting the same (shared) data over and over. Based on the number of distinct vehicles that contributed lane data, a logarithmic confidence value is computed. The confidence value is used to limit sharing from only the confident data sources.