Efficiently Bounding the Probabilities of Vehicle Collision at Intelligent Intersections

Intelligent intersections have the potential to serve as an integral part of tomorrow's traffic infrastructure. Wireless communication is key to enabling such technology. We consider a scenario where two flows of vehicles traverse an intelligent intersection. We investigate safety in emergency braking scenarios, where one of the vehicles in a flow suddenly decides to emergency brake and emergency braking messages are broadcast to affected vehicles. We provide a framework for computing lower bounds on probabilities for safe braking - collisions between vehicles are to be avoided. If we require that a crash or collision, for example, occurs at most once in a million scenarios, our approach allows for computation of lower bounds on the time-varying (or distance-varying) packet loss probabilities to ensure this. One of the benefits of the proposed framework is that the computational time is reduced; eliminating, for example, the need for time-consuming Monte Carlo simulations.