IEEE INTERNET OF THINGS JOURNAL, VOL. 9, NO.
2, JANUARY 15, 2022
A Dynamic Evolution Method for Autonomous
Vehicle Groups in a Highway Scene
Jiujun Cheng , Mingdong Ju , MengChu Zhou , Fellow, IEEE, Cong Liu ,
Shangce Gao , Senior Member, IEEE, Abdullah Abusorrah , Senior Member, IEEE, and Changjun Jiang
Abstract—Vehicle groups that are composed of autonomous
vehicles can increase the perception range of vehicles, and
their dynamic evolution can provide guidance for the opera-
tion of autonomous vehicles. Most existing studies on vehicle
group formation neither propose a standard vehicle group model,
nor consider vehicle mobility and dynamic topology of vehi-
cle groups. Instead, they focus on detecting dynamic evolution
without predicting it. This work proposes a dynamic evolution
method for autonomous vehicle groups. It first defines five vehi-
cle states and their transitions. Then, it proposes an autonomous
vehicle group formation method based on vehicle states and for-
mulates an autonomous vehicle group model. Next, it uses meta
vehicle group sequences to manage vehicle groups at different
times. Finally, it gives detection and prediction methods of vehi-
cle group dynamic evolution. Extensive simulation results show
that the proposed method can be used to establish interconnection
among autonomous vehicle nodes, detect dynamic evolution char-
acteristics inside a vehicle group precisely, and predict dynamic
evolution trends of vehicle groups effectively.
Index Terms—Autonomous vehicle group, autonomous vehicle,
dynamic evolution, highway scene.
Manuscript received January 27, 2021; revised March 15, 2021 and
May 16, 2021; accepted June 1, 2021. Date of publication June 7, 2021;
date of current version January 7, 2022. This work was supported in part
by the National Key Research and Development Program of China under
Grant 2018YFB2100801; in part by NSFC under Grant 61872271 and
Grant 61902222; in part by the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central
Universities under Grant 22120190208; and in part by the Open Foundation
of State Key Laboratory of Networking and Switching Technology (Beijing
University of Posts and Telecommunications) under Grant SKLNST-2020-1-
20. (Corresponding authors: MengChu Zhou; Cong Liu; Shangce Gao.)
Jiujun Cheng is with the Ministry of Education Key Laboratory
of Embedded System and Service Computing, Tongji University,
Shanghai 201804, China, and also with the State Key Laboratory of
Networking and Switching Technology, Beijing University of Posts and
Telecommunications, Beijing 100876, China (e-mail: chengjj@tongji.edu.cn).
Mingdong Ju and Changjun Jiang are with the Ministry of Education
Key Laboratory of Embedded System and Service Computing, Tongji
University, Shanghai 201804, China (e-mail: 1933011@tongji.edu.cn;
cjjiang@tongji.edu.cn).
MengChu Zhou is with the Department of Electrical and Computer
Engineering, New Jersey Institute of Technology, Newark, NJ 07102 USA
(e-mail: mengchu.zhou@njit.edu).
Cong Liu is with the School of Computer Science and Technology,
Shandong University of Technology, Zibo 255000, China (e-mail:
liucongchina@sdust.edu.cn).
Shangce Gao is with the Faculty of Engineering, University of Toyama,
Toyama 930-8555, Japan (e-mail: gaosc@eng.u-toyama.ac.jp).
Abdullah Abusorrah is with the Department of Electrical and Computer
Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, and Center of Research Excellence
in Renewable Energy and Power System, King Abdulaziz University,
Jeddah 21481, Saudi Arabia (e-mail: aabusorrah@kau.edu.sa).
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/JIOT.2021.3086832
2327-4662 
c 2021 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission.
See https://www.ieee.org/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
Authorized licensed use limited to: VIT University- Chennai Campus. Downloaded on October 17,2022 at 07:25:07 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
1445
I. I NTRODUCTION
UTONOMOUS vehicle technology is developing rapidly
A with the continuous improvement of artificial intelligence
technology [1]–[3]. An autonomous vehicle is a robot that
can move at a high speed, sense road environment, and make
autonomous decisions. It relies on dynamics or kinematics to
plan its driving path, and control itself to drive on such planned
path. Their wide use can effectively reduce traffic congestion,
prevent traffic accidents, and reduce air pollution.
Information communication and coordination among vehi-
cles is a hot research topic, which has attracted the attention of
many researchers [4]–[6]. An autonomous vehicle group refers
to a group of autonomous vehicles with similar locations, sim-
ilar movement trends, and close communication. There are
many schemes, e.g., [7]–[9], and routing protocols, e.g., [10],
[11], to ensure the information transmission in a vehicle group.
Constructing a stable and interconnected vehicle group can
enable autonomous vehicles to have a larger perception range,
reduce perception blind zone, and avoid a chaotic state caused
by independent decisions of autonomous vehicles. At the same
time, based on the dynamic evolution of vehicle groups, accel-
eration and deceleration processes of autonomous vehicles can
be optimized, and the power system can be rationally utilized
to improve fuel efficiency and reduce exhaust emissions.
Vehicle groups on highway have the following features.
1) Vehicle Mobility: In a highway scene, the velocities of
vehicle nodes are high. All vehicle nodes move fast
while nodes in a static network remain stationary.
2) Dynamic Topology: A vehicle group is a dynamic
network. In a highway scene, the speed difference
between vehicle nodes leads to a change of the network
topology of a vehicle group.
Vehicle group formation is a dynamic process. Most existing
studies on it, e.g., [12]–[19], consider the dynamic character-
istics of vehicle groups, but they fail to propose a standard
vehicle group model. Vehicle groups change dynamically
during movement. Detection and prediction are both impor-
tant contents of dynamic evolution. Most existing studies
on dynamic evolution, e.g., [20]–[25], focus on detecting
the dynamic evolution of vehicle groups and fail to predict
dynamic evolution. The prediction results of dynamic evolu-
tion can be used to guide the subsequent evolution of vehicle
groups, such as the formation of a new vehicle group.
In this work, we consider autonomous vehicles in a high-
way scene. The vehicle nodes in a vehicle group are directly
1446
Fig. 1. Dynamic evolution of vehicle groups in a highway scene.
or indirectly connected to a leading node during movement,
as shown in Fig. 1. First, we study the states of autonomous
vehicle nodes and classify vehicle nodes into multiple differ-
ent states. Next, we propose an Autonomous Vehicle Group
Formation (AVGF) method and use multiplemetrics to eval-
uate the performance of vehicle groups. The interference of
manned vehicle nodes and the influence of a node’s joining and
leaving a group tend to make vehicle group topology change
dynamically. To understand the real-time structure of vehi-
cle groups, this work investigates changes of vehicle nodes,
dynamic evolution of vehicle groups, and structure changes of
vehicle groups. Finally, we propose detection and prediction
methods for a vehicle group’s dynamic evolution events. This
work makes the following contributions.
1) It classifies vehicle nodes into multiple different groups
according to their states, and proposes an AVGF method.
2) It introduces several metrics to evaluate the performance
of autonomous vehicle groups, and proposes an
autonomous vehicle group model.
3) It proposes a meta vehicle group sequence discovery
method based on similarity among vehicle groups, ana-
lyzes the dynamic evolution behavior of vehicle groups,
and proposes a dynamic evolution detection method.
4) It proposes a prediction method for dynamic evolution
events of autonomous vehicle groups.
In addition, simulation is conducted to show the results of
the proposed methods. The remainder of this article is orga-
nized as follows. Section II introduces related work. Section III
presents an autonomous vehicle group model. Section IV intro-
duces detection and prediction methods for dynamic evolution
events of vehicle groups. Section V gives the performance of
proposed methods. Finally, Section VI draws the conclusion.
II. R ELATED W ORK
A. Vehicle Group Formation
Rossi et al. [12] proposed a stable clustering algorithm.
It incorporates knowledge of the vehicle behavior to select
a particular vehicle as a Cluster Head (CH) in each clus-
ter and maintains the stability of cluster structures through
a backup CH. But every time a node joins or leaves the clus-
ter, the CH election process is performed again. Wolny [13]
proposed a clustering algorithm, which consists of two stages,
Authorized licensed use limited to: VIT University- Chennai Campus. Downloaded on October 17,2022 at 07:25:07 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
IEEE INTERNET OF THINGS JOURNAL, VOL. 9, NO. 2, JANUARY 15, 2022
i.e., cluster formation and cluster maintenance. Their algorithm
improves the stability of vehicle groups when they meet in dif-
ferent directions. But it does not use a handshake mechanism,
and thus, the loss of messages may cause faulty affiliation.
Ren et al. [14] proposed a dynamic clustering scheme based on
vehicle’s relative position, moving direction, etc. A clustering
approach in [15] contains three parts: 1) neighbor sampling;
2) CH selection; and 3) cluster maintenance. Their results
show that it performs well in terms of stability under high
dynamic traffic scenarios. However, their methods are not suit-
able for multihop situations. Zhang et al. [16] proposed a
passive clustering scheme. The neighbor nodes join the same
cluster according to a neighbor-following strategy based on
priority. Zhou et al. [17] used base stations to elect a new CH
by using the relative position among vehicles and the relative
distance from a vehicle to a base station. Their method needs
to control the size of a cluster to reduce the probability of
packet collision.
B. Dynamic Evolution
Palla et al. [20] proposed a method to detect evolutionary
events during the dynamic evolution of a complex network,
and they extended it to detect communities in continuous
timestamps. Their results reveal the community evolution
rules, but the performance needs improvement when applied
to the dynamic evolution of vehicle groups. Asur et al. [21]
designed a matching-based method to identify community evo-
lution events. It focuses on the life cycle of a node, but
its performance on large-scale data sets is not very good
and it cannot detect dynamic evolution events across time.
Zhuang et al. [22] proposed a modularity-based dynamic
community detection algorithm by repeatedly applying static
algorithms. Wang et al. [23] assumed that different nodes
evolve in different ways and it introduces an algorithm to ana-
lyze network evolution based on the nodes’ evolution diversity.
However, it simply represents a network as an undirected and
unweighted graph without considering the connection weights
among vehicles. Pavlopoulou et al. [24] used temporal and
structural features to represent communities. They set up a
supervised learning task to predict communities’ future forms.
However, their method cannot predict the merges and splits
of communities. Greene et al. [25] characterized a commu-
nity through some evolutionary events and applied weighted
bipartite matching to match communities. Its performance in
detecting split and merge events of vehicle groups can be
improved.
C. Summary
Recently, research into autonomous vehicle groups has
attracted wide attention. Most existing studies on vehicle group
formation neither formulate a vehicle group model nor consider
the high vehicle mobility and the highly dynamic topology
of vehicle groups. Most existing studies on dynamic evolu-
tion focus on detecting dynamic evolution without predicting
dynamic evolution. Efforts are required to model vehicle groups
and study the dynamic evolution of vehicle groups.
CHENG et al.: DYNAMIC EVOLUTION METHOD FOR AUTONOMOUS VEHICLE GROUPS IN HIGHWAY SCENE 1447

III. AUTONOMOUS V EHICLE G ROUP M ODEL

An autonomous vehicle group model is described in
this section. First, we introduce a formal specification for
autonomous vehicle groups. Then, we analyze the states of
autonomous vehicle nodes. Next, we introduce an AVGF
method. Finally, we present four metrics to evaluate the
performance of autonomous vehicle groups and give an
autonomous vehicle groups model.

A. Formal Specification
Definition 1: Autonomous Vehicle Topology is a three-tuple
G = (V, E, W) where:
1) V = {vi |i ∈ {1, 2, . . . , }} is a node set such that node
vi represents an autonomous vehicle, and N = |V|
represents the number of nodes;
2) E = {eij |vi ∈ V ∧ vj ∈ V} is an edge set such that edge
eij represents a communication link between vi and vj ;
3) W = {wij |eij ∈ E} is a weight set such that wij represents
the weight of eij .
Definition 2: The autonomous vehicle connectivity between
vi and vj is
   indicates the speed difference between vi and its neigh-
  0, d vi , vj > R
C vi , vj =   (1)
1 − ( ( Ri 2 j )) , d vi , vj ≤ R
2
d v ,v
where d(vi , vj ) denotes the distance from vi to vj , and R
denotes the communication range of autonomous vehicles.
Definition 3: For vehicle nodes vi and vj , if C(vi , vj ) > 0,
vi is a neighbor node of vj .
Definition 4: The neighbor node set of vi at time t is
   
Ni (t) = vj |vj ∈ V, C vi , vj > 0 . (2)
Definition 5: A vehicle group is a three-tuple  = (V̂, Ê, Ŵ)
where:
1) V̂ ⊂ V;
2) Ê = (V̂ × V̂) ∩ E;
3) Ŵ ⊂ W.
Definition 6: For autonomous vehicle groups p and q , if
∃vi ∈ V̂p , vj ∈ V̂q , and C(vi , vj ) > 0, p is a neighbor vehicle
group of q .
B. States of Vehicles
To describe the formation process of autonomous vehicle
groups, we define five states of a vehicle node.
1) Initialization State IN: An IN state is the initial state of
a vehicle node. In an IN state, a vehicle node exchanges
information with other vehicle nodes to maintain a
Vehicle Information Basic Table (VIBT) that includes
information of itself and its neighbor nodes. VIBT is
constantly updated, and thus, a vehicle node can get the
information of its neighbor nodes in a timely manner. A
VIBT example is shown in Table II in the Appendix.
2) Selection State SE: A vehicle node in an SE state com-
petes with other vehicle nodes to become the leading
node.
3) Leading Node LN and Common Node CN States: A
vehicle group consists of an LN and several CNs. We
Fig. 2. State transitions of a vehicle node.
use relative mobility to select stable leading nodes. The
relative mobility of vi is
|Ni |  

j=1 si − sj
Mi = (3)
|Ni |
where Ni is the neighbor node set of vi , si represents the
speed of vi , and sj represents the speed of vj in Ni . Mi
bor nodes. If vi has the smallest relative mobility, it is
selected as an LN, and its neighbor nodes are treated
as CNs.
4) Free Node FN State: If a vehicle node cannot connect
to any other vehicle nodes, it is a free node.
C. Autonomous Vehicle Group Formation Method
An AVGF method is essentially a vehicle node state transi-
tion method, as shown in Fig. 2.
① IN → SE: An autonomous vehicle node is initialized in
an IN state and exchanges packets with other vehicle nodes to
build its VIBT. Then, it changes to an SE state.
② SE → FN: If a vehicle node in an SE state cannot find
any neighbor vehicle nodes, it changes to an FN state.
③ FN → SE: If a vehicle node in an FN state finds a vehicle
node that is not a leading or common node, it changes to an
SE state.
④ FN → CN: If a vehicle node in an FN state finds a
leading or common node, it tries to connect to the leading
node directly or through a common node and changes to a
CN state.
⑤ SE → LN: If a vehicle node in an SE state finds a neigh-
bor node in an SE state, then it competes with its neighbor
node to become a leading node. If it succeeds, it changes to
an LN state.
⑥ SE → CN: If a vehicle node in an SE state finds a
neighbor node in an SE state and it fails to compete to become
a leading node, then it changes to a CN state.
⑦ LN → SE: If a leading node cannot find any common
nodes, then it changes to an SE state.
⑧ CN → SE: If a common node cannot connect to its
leading node, then it changes to an SE state.
A state transition process of a vehicle node is shown
in Algorithm 1. LN ˆ and CN ˆ are the maximum number of
members that LN and CN can serve, respectively.

Authorized licensed use limited to: VIT University- Chennai Campus. Downloaded on October 17,2022 at 07:25:07 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
1448 IEEE INTERNET OF THINGS JOURNAL, VOL. 9, NO. 2, JANUARY 15, 2022

Algorithm 1 State Transition Algorithm where Aij is an element of an adjacency matrix. p and q
1: Input: Vehicle Information Basic Table VIBT represent vehicle groups containing vi and vj , respectively. np
2: for LN ∈ VIBT do and nq represent the number of nodes in p and q , respec-
3: if TRY_CONNECTLN == false then tively. di and dj denote the degree of vi and vj , respectively.
4: if MEMBERLN < LN ˆ then m is the total number of edges in the network. δ(p , q ) is a
5: send JOIN_REQ; discriminant function that indicates whether two vehicle nodes
6: end if are in the same vehicle group. If vi and vj belong to the same
7: if JOIN_RESP received then vehicle group, δ(p , q ) is 1, otherwise, it is 0. A large mod-
8: Vstate = CN; Exit; ularity indicates that a vehicle group has high coupling degree
9: end if and strong stability.
10: TRY_CONNECTLN = true; 2) Leading Node Ratio: The leading node ratio P represents
11: end if the ratio between the number of leading nodes and the total
12: end for number of nodes
13: for CN ∈ VIBT do
N
14: if TRY_CONNECTCN == false then P= (5)
ˆ then N
15: if MEMBERCN < CN
16: if HOPCN < MAX_HOP then where N represents the number of leading nodes. N represents
17: send JOIN_REQ; the total number of nodes. P with high value indicates that
18: end if there are many vehicle groups. They tend to encounter each
19: if JOIN_RESP received then other and undergo frequent dynamic evolution.
20: Vstate = CN; Exit; 3) Average Number of State Changes: For a vehicle group
21: end if p , S̄p represents the average number of state changes of all
22: TRY_CONNECTCN = true; nodes, i.e.,
23: end if |V̂p |
24: end if k=1 Sk
S̄p = (6)
25: end for |V̂p |
26: if Not exists SE ∈ VIBT then
27: Vstate = FN; Exit; where Sk represents the number of state changes of a node.
28: end if
The frequent state changes typically mean that a vehicle group
29: if Mcurr == minSE∈VIBT (MSE ) then
is not stable.
30: Vstate = LN; Broadcast LN1_ADV; Exit; 4) Average Lead Node Time: For a vehicle group p , the
31: end if
average lead node time, denoted as T̄p , is defined as the
32: Output:
average time of a leading node, i.e.,
|V̂p |
k=1 Tk
T̄p = (7)
|Lp |
First, a vehicle node in an SE state finds a leading node
and sends a JOIN_REQ packet to it. If the former receives where Tk denotes the time when a node in V̂p is a leading
a JOIN_RESP from a leading node, it changes to a CN state node in its life cycle. Lp is a set of leading nodes in V̂p . Large
(lines 2–12). Then, if it cannot connect directly to a leading T̄p indicates that vehicle group p rarely changes its leading
node, it attempts to connect to a common node (lines 13–25). node and is more stable.
Next, if a vehicle node cannot connect to any leading or com-
mon nodes and there are no adjacent vehicle nodes in an SE E. Autonomous Vehicle Group Model and Related Conditions
state, it changes to an FN state (lines 26–28). Finally, if it
finds a vehicle node in an SE state and its relative mobil- In this work, we construct a vehicle group model, which
ity is smaller than that of the latter, it converts to an LN state means that a vehicle group meets the following condition:
 ◦ ◦ ◦
(lines 29–31). Otherwise, it remains in an SE state and repeats
Q, P ≤ P ∧ S̄p ≤ S ∧ T̄p ≥ T
Algorithm 1 again. Q= ◦ ◦ ◦ (8)
−0.5, P > P ∨ S̄p > S ∨ T̄p < T
◦ ◦ ◦
D. Performance Metrics where Q denotes the modularity of G. P, S, and T denote the
In this section, we introduce four metrics to evaluate vehicle threshold of P, S̄p , and T̄p , respectively.
groups’ performance. The formation of an autonomous vehicle group means that
1) Modularity: Modularity is used to quantify the internal the state of autonomous vehicle nodes meets four performance
and external density of vehicle groups. Its definition is due metrics, i.e., P, S̄p , T̄p , and Q. In order to determine whether
to [26] a vehicle set is a stable
◦
vehicle group, P is first calculated. If
P is smaller than P, then S̄p and T̄p are calculated. If S̄p is
1 1 di dj  p q  ◦ ◦
Q= Aij − δ  , (4) smaller than S and T̄p is bigger than T, Q is calculated and
2m np nq 2m this vehicle set is a stable vehicle group.
ij

Authorized licensed use limited to: VIT University- Chennai Campus. Downloaded on October 17,2022 at 07:25:07 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
CHENG et al.: DYNAMIC EVOLUTION METHOD FOR AUTONOMOUS VEHICLE GROUPS IN HIGHWAY SCENE 1449

IV. DYNAMIC E VOLUTION M ETHOD Algorithm 2 Meta Vehicle Group Sequence Detection
Algorithm
A dynamic evolution method is introduced in this section.
Input: Vehicle Group Set D∗t = {t 1 , t 2 , . . . , t n } at
p p p
First, we propose a meta vehicle group sequence detection 1:
method. Then, we analyze the dynamic evolution behavior time t, threshold K, Meta Vehicle Group Sequences H =
of vehicle groups. Next, we propose a detection method for {1 , 2 ...}
for t ∈ D∗t do
p
dynamic evolution events. Finally, we provide a prediction 2:
method for dynamic evolution events. 3: n = t − 1, c = 0, max = 0;
4: while true do
5: for i ∈ H do
A. Meta Vehicle Group Sequence q
6: if n is the latest vehicle group in i then
p q
Definition 7: The vehicle group similarity between vehicle 7: calculate θ (t , n );
groups p and q is 8:
p q p q
if θ (t , n ) ≥ K and θ (t , n ) > max then
  p q
max = θ (t , n ); c = i;
  9:
 p q  V̂p ∩ V̂q  10: end if
θ  , =     (9)
    11: end if
max V̂p , V̂q 
12: end for
13: if max = 0 then
where |V̂p | and |V̂q | represent the number of nodes in V̂p and p
14: push t to c ; break;
V̂q , respectively. 15: end if
Definition 8: If θ (p , q ) is greater than the threshold k, 16: n = n − 1;
vehicle groups p and q are similar, i.e., 17: if n < 0, break;

  1, θ (p , q ) ≥ k 18: end while
  p , q = (10) if n < 0 then
0, θ (p , q ) < k. 19:
p
20: form a new j ; j = {t }; push j to H;
Definition 9: For a given set of times 1, 2, . . . , n, a meta 21: end if
vehicle group sequence is  = {t1 , t2 , . . . , tm }, if: 22: end for
1) any two autonomous vehicle groups in  are not at the 23: Output: Meta Vehicle Group Sequences H
same time and 1 ≤ t1 < t2 < · · · < tm ≤ n;
2) in , a vehicle group is similar to a previous vehicle
group, i.e., ∀ti , 1 < i ≤ m, ∃tj < ti : (tj , ti ) = 1. B. Vehicle Group Changes
A meta vehicle group sequence is a collection of simi-
lar vehicle groups. Traditional greedy matching methods for In order to investigate internal changes of a vehicle group,
meta vehicle group sequence detection cannot handle the sit- we analyze behavior of vehicle nodes in a vehicle group, and
uation where a vehicle group has the same similarity with define four changes of nodes.
multiple previous vehicle groups. Therefore, this work pro- 1) Appear: A node appears at time t, e.g., a vehicle enters
poses a detection method that can find a vehicle group with the the highway
maximum similarity among possible matching vehicle groups α(v, t) = 1, v ∈ Vt and ∀t < t, v ∈
/ Vt . (11)
at the previous moment, as shown in Algorithm 2.
The following explanations are given for Algorithm 2. First, 2) Disappear: At time t, a node that has been in a group
a vehicle group set is obtained by using a vehicle group forma- cannot be found, e.g., a vehicle leaves the highway
tion method at time 0. Each vehicle group is considered as a β(v, t) = 1, v ∈ Vt and ∀t > t, v ∈
/ Vt . (12)
newly formed vehicle group, and  is created for each vehicle
group. After passing t time, a weighted bipartite graph is con- 3) Join: A free node joins a vehicle group
structed between vehicle groups at time t−1 and t. The weights  p p q
among vehicle groups are similarity values. Then, a bipartite γ v, t = 1, v ∈ V̂p , t ∈  and ∀ t ∈ ,
graph matching is used to match vehicle groups at time t and t < t, v ∈
/ V̂q . (13)
p q q p
t − 1 (lines 5–12). If t matches t−1 , t−1 survives to t .
p q 4) Leave: A member node leaves a vehicle group
Therefore, t is added to  that contains t−1 (lines 13–15).  p p q
If a vehicle group at time t is not similar to any vehicle groups λ v, t = 1, v ∈ V̂p , t ∈  and ∀ t ∈ ,
t−1 , then it tries to match the unselected vehicle groups at t > t, v ∈
/ V̂q . (14)
time t − 2 (line 16). When all vehicle groups at time t find
a similar vehicle group within the time range of 0 ≤ t < t A vehicle group changes dynamically, for example, it may
or when all existing meta vehicle group sequences have been be splitted into multiple vehicle groups when encountering
matched, the matching process stops. Vehicle groups that have a fork. We abstract five evolutionary events from dynamic
no similar vehicle groups are treated as newly formed vehicle changes of vehicle groups, i.e., form, survive, split, merge,
groups, and  is created for each of them (lines 19–21). At and dissolve, as shown in Fig. 3.
p
time t, each vehicle group is assigned to , and it transfers to 1) Form: If there is a vehicle group t at time t, and no
p
time t + 1 to continue the iteration. previous vehicle group is similar to it, then t is a newly

Authorized licensed use limited to: VIT University- Chennai Campus. Downloaded on October 17,2022 at 07:25:07 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
1450 IEEE INTERNET OF THINGS JOURNAL, VOL. 9, NO. 2, JANUARY 15, 2022

Fig. 3. Autonomous vehicle groups dynamic evolution.

 
 
formed vehicle group  V̂q1 ∪ V̂q2 ∪ · · · ∪ V̂qn ∩ V̂p 
 p   p    ≥k (22)
f t , t = 1, ∀ t < t, ω t , t = ∅  
(15) V̂p 
p
where ω(t , t ) is used to find a vehicle group similar
p p q where D∗t is a vehicle group set. At time t (t > t ), the
to t at time t . k represents the threshold of θ (t , t )
similarity of the vehicle group in D∗t and t is greater
p
 p
 p  ∅, σ <k than k. In order to ensure that most members of t
ω t , t = argmax q ∗ θ p , q , σ ≥ k (16) ∗ p
come from Dt , the similarity of the nodes in t and all
t ∈Dt t t
 p q nodes in D∗t should be greater than k.
σ = max θ  t ,  t (17)
 ∈D∗
q

∗
 t q1 t q2 q  C. Dynamic Evolution Detection
Dt = t , t , . . . , t n . (18)
p
Vehicle group internal structure changes with node change
2) Dissolve: If no later vehicle group is similar to t , then events and vehicle group evolution ones. This work proposes
p
t dissolves, i.e., a detection method that can detect the following changes.
 p   p  p q
1) Scale Change: If t survives to t and there are fewer
d t , t = 1, ∀ t > t, ω t , t = ∅. (19) q p p
nodes in t than in t , t shrinks, i.e.,
3) Survive: A vehicle group is similar to a later vehicle    
 p q  p  q    
group. A survive event can be expressed as follows: ε t , t = 1, if ω t , t = t and V̂p  > V̂q . (23)
 p  q  p  q
k t , t = 1, ∃t , t > t, ω t , t = t . (20) p
Otherwise, t expands, i.e.,
4) Split: There are two or more vehicle groups similar to  p q  p     
q    
the same previous vehicle group, i.e., ε̃ t , t = 1, if ω t , t = t and V̂p  < V̂q . (24)
s(t , t) = 1, ∃D∗t = {t 1 , t 2 , . . . , t n }, n > 1, t >
p q q q
p q
t, and 2) Density Change: If t survives to t and there are
  p
  fewer edges in Êp than in Êq , t compacts, i.e.,
 V̂p ∩ V̂q 
q
∀ t ∈ Dt , ∗   ≥ k,  p q  p  q
  ζ t , t = 1, if ω t , t = t and
V̂q     
     
  Êp  Êq 
 V̂q1 ∪ V̂q2 ∪ · · · ∪ V̂qn ∩ V̂p      <     . (25)
  ≥k (21)        
  V̂p  V̂p  − 1 V̂q  V̂q  − 1
V̂p 
p
where D∗t is a vehicle group set. At time t (t < t ), Otherwise, t diffuses, i.e.,
the similarity of the vehicle group in D∗t and t is
p  p q  p  q
ζ̃ t , t = 1, if ω t , t = t and
greater than threshold k. In addition, in order to prevent    
p    
too many nodes in t from leaving the vehicle group, Êp  Êq 
the similarity of vehicle nodes in D∗t and t should be
p     >     . (26)
       
greater than k. V̂p  V̂p  − 1 V̂q  V̂q  − 1
5) Merge: At time t, a vehicle group is similar to multiple
previous vehicle groups, i.e., Definition 10: The centrality of node v in p is defined as
m(t , t) = 1, ∃D∗t = {t 1 , t 2 , . . . , t n }, n > 1,
p q q q
η(v, p )
t < t, and ψ(v) =   (27)
 
  V̂p  − 1
 
 V̂p ∩ V̂q 
q ∗   ≥k
∀ t ∈ Dt , where η(v, p ) represents the number of edges connected to
 
V̂q  v in p .

Authorized licensed use limited to: VIT University- Chennai Campus. Downloaded on October 17,2022 at 07:25:07 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
CHENG et al.: DYNAMIC EVOLUTION METHOD FOR AUTONOMOUS VEHICLE GROUPS IN HIGHWAY SCENE 1451

3) Leading Node Change: If different leading nodes are Algorithm 3 Classification Model Selection Algorithm
detected in two similar vehicle groups, the leading node has 1: Input: models={J48,DT,ADA,NB}, training samples,
changed, i.e., testing samples, F = {form, dissolve, survive, split,
 p q  p  q
merge}
ϕ t , t = 1, if ω t , t = t and 2: i=1
argmax {ψ(v)} = argmax {ψ(v)}. (28) 3: for model in models do
p q
v∈t v∈t 4: divide training samples into n batches
p q
5: for batch in batches do
4) Persistent Change: If t and t have the same number 6: use batch samples to feed the model
of nodes and edges, then the vehicle group has undergone a 7: calculate loss
persistent change, i.e., 8: use loss to update model parameters
 p q  p      end for
q     9:
ξ t , t = 1, ω t , t = t , V̂p  = V̂q , 10: save the model
   
    11: end for
and Êp  = Êq . (29)
12: for model in models do

A vehicle group dynamic evolution detection method can 13: test model on testing samples
detect structure changes and dynamic evolution events of vehi- 14: for category in F do
p
cle groups. First, if no previous vehicle group matches t , t
p 15: calculate precision P, recall R
is a newly formed vehicle group. Otherwise, if no later vehi- 16: calculate f1(category)=2*P*R/(P+R)
p p
cle group matches t , t dissolves. If there are two or more 17: end for
vehicle groups that are similar to the same previous vehicle 18: f1(i) = weighted summation of all categories
group, a split event occurs. If there is a vehicle group that is 19: i++
20: end for
similar to two previous vehicle groups, a merge event occurs.
21: select max f1(i)
Finally, if only one previous vehicle group is similar to the
22: Output: Best Classification Model
current one, a survive event occurs and the number of nodes
and edges of vehicle groups is calculated to detect structure
changes.
1) C4.5 Decision Tree (J48) Algorithm: The C4.5 decision
tree algorithm [28] uses information gain ratio to select
D. Dynamic Evolution Prediction useful features, i.e.,
To predict a vehicle group’s dynamic evolution, we need to I(Y, ρ)
extract its features. According to the graph theory, it can be IR (Y, ρ) = (33)
Hρ (Y, ρ)
abstracted into a network that contains many nodes and edges.
Then, it is quantized into a sample by feature extraction, i.e., where Y = {y(1) , y(2) , . . . , y(m) }, ρ is a feature. I(Y, ρ)
is the information gain and Hρ (Y, ρ) is the entropy of ρ.
u z c g h b r
x = a, b, , , , , , , (30) 2) Decision Table Algorithm: This algorithm [29] can be
a a a a a h a seen as a set of If-Then rules, and its learning and
where a is the number of nodes in a vehicle group, b is the classification steps are simpler than decision trees.
number of edges among nodes, u is the number of edges, z 3) ADAboost.M1 Algorithm: ADAboost.M1 (ADA) [30]
is the number of edges connecting the nodes in and out of a combines several weak learning algorithms to obtain a
vehicle group, c is the sum of edges’ durations, g is the sum strong classifier. Its final hypothesis y is a weighted sum
of nodes’ durations, h is the sum of nodes’ degrees, and r is of weak hypotheses yt , i.e.,
the sum of nodes’ hop counts. 1
Dynamic evolution prediction is a classification problem. y (x) = arg max log (34)
y∈F μt
For a vehicle group sample x, its label y is t:yt =y

where μt is the weight of yt .

y ∈ F = {form, dissolve, survive, split, merge}.
The classification algorithms predict the state of a vehicle
group x at the next moment. They have five outputs that cor-
respond to five states. The output with the maximum value is
the state in which a vehicle group is predicted to be at the
next moment.
We use the Waikato environment for knowledge analy-
sis [27] to train and test the following classification algorithms
on:
 
x(1) , y(1) , x(2) , y(2) , . . . , x(m) , y(m) . (32)
(31) 4) Naive Bayes Algorithm: Naive Bayes (NB) [31] is based
on Bayes’ theorem, i.e.,
P(x|y)
P(y|x) = P(y) (35)
P(x)
which uses the prior probability P(y) to calculate the
posterior probability P(y|x).
A model selection process is shown in Algorithm 3. First,
we train four classification models on training samples (lines
3–11). Then, these models are tested on testing samples, and
each model’s precision, recall, and F1-measure are calcu-
lated (lines 12–20). The classification model with the best

Authorized licensed use limited to: VIT University- Chennai Campus. Downloaded on October 17,2022 at 07:25:07 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
1452 IEEE INTERNET OF THINGS JOURNAL, VOL. 9, NO. 2, JANUARY 15, 2022

TABLE I
performance is selected to predict the dynamic evolution M AJOR N OTATIONS
events of a vehicle group (line 21).

V. E XPERIMENTAL AND E VALUATION

A. Simulation Setting
In this section, we use NS3 (version 3.17) and SUMO to
perform our simulation. The former is a network simulator
and the latter is a traffic one. We set the road topology as a
one-way two-lane road with a length of 10 km, and an exit
every 2 km. The speed of autonomous vehicle nodes follows
a uniform distribution with the lower limit of 60 km/h and
higher limit of 120 km/h, and vehicle nodes randomly choose
an exit to leave the highway. The number of hops of a node is
the minimum number of hops from it to a leading node. The
parameters are summarized in Table III in the Appendix.

B. Simulation Results of Vehicle Group Model

The modularity of MDMAC [13] and AVGF is shown in
Fig. 4(a) and (b). The modularity increases sharply from the
beginning until it stabilizes, which indicates that a vehicle
group formation process is gradually completed. Fig. 4(a)
shows that AVGF forms vehicle groups faster than MDMAC.
It takes about 220 ms, while MDMAC takes about 280 ms. The
modularity of AVGF is higher than that of MAMAC, and it
fluctuates little, which means vehicle groups formed by AVGF
are better.
The relationship between average lead node time and
speed is shown in Fig. 4(c)–(e). The average lead node time
decreases as the maximum speed increases. In the case of one
hop, when the maximum speed is 70, 100, and 120 km/h,
the average lead node time of AVGF is 243, 215, and 201 s,
respectively. The average lead node time of AVGF is higher
than MDMAC’s, which indicates that AVGF has an effi- some nodes to lose connections to the leading node, these
cient vehicle group maintenance mechanism. As the maximum nodes will return to an SE state or become free nodes. With the
number of hops increases, the average lead node time of AVGF same maximum allowable hops and speed, the leading node
increases from 232 to 261 s when the maximum speed is ratio of AVGF is lower than that of MDMAC in most cases,
90 km/h. A leading node has a greater chance to find other which proves that AVGF has good aggregation effect and high
nodes, which helps it form a large and stable vehicle group. stability. As the maximum number of hops increases, the lead-
The relationship between the average number of state ing node ratio of AVGF decreases from 0.1 to 0.06 when the
changes and speed is shown in Fig. 4(f)–(h). The speed differ- maximum speed is 90 km/h. Because the number of vehicle
ence among vehicle nodes increases with the maximum speed, nodes in a vehicle group increases with the maximum number
which weakens the stability of a vehicle group and leads to of hops, which leads to a reduction in the leading node ratio.
an increase in the average number of state changes. In the
case of one hop, when the maximum speed is 70, 100, and
120 km/h, the average number of state changes of AVGF is 10, C. Simulation Results of Vehicle Group Dynamic Evolution
22, and 38, respectively. The increase of the maximum hops To verify the influence of vehicle group similarity threshold
enhances the stability of a vehicle group, which reduces the k on vehicle group evolution, we designed two experiments
average number of state changes. As the maximum number of with different speeds. The first group is [60, 70] km/h and the
hops increases, the average number of state changes of AVGF second group is [60, 120] km/h. k is set to 0.1, 0.2, . . . , 1.0,
decreases from 18 to 12 when the maximum speed is 90 km/h. respectively. Data are collected from 10 s, and the network
The relationship between leading node ratio and speed is topology is generated every 15 s.
shown in Fig. 4(i)–(k). The leading node ratio is calculated at The relationship between dynamic evolution events and sim-
110 s. In the case of the same maximum allowable hops, the ilarity threshold is shown in Fig. 5(a)–(e). Both the number
leading node ratio increases with the maximum speed. When of form and the number of dissolve are equal to the num-
the maximum speed is 70, 100, and 120 km/h for one-hop ber of meta vehicle group sequences and increase with k. The
cases, the leading node ratio of AVGF is 0.06, 0.13, and 0.19, numbers of survive, split, and merge decrease as k increases.
respectively. Because the large speed difference will cause The increase of the maximum speed means that the speed

Authorized licensed use limited to: VIT University- Chennai Campus. Downloaded on October 17,2022 at 07:25:07 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
CHENG et al.: DYNAMIC EVOLUTION METHOD FOR AUTONOMOUS VEHICLE GROUPS IN HIGHWAY SCENE 1453

Fig. 4. Simulation results of a vehicle group model. (a) Modularity within 0.5 s. (b) Modularity within 200 s. (c) 1-hop. (d) 2-hop. (e) 3-hop. (f) 1-hop.
(g) 2-hop. (h) 3-hop. (i) 1-hop. (j) 2-hop. (k) 3-hop.

difference becomes larger, and the number of all evolution
events increases.
The relationship between vehicle group structure change and
similarity threshold is shown in Fig. 5(f). The scale change
ratio and leading node change ratio decrease as k increases.
The value of density change is always 1 because the commu-
nication range of a vehicle is 200 m. The value of persistent
change is 0, which indicates that vehicle groups are changing
dynamically. Hence, when exploring the internal structure of
a vehicle group, a high similarity threshold can be set for a

Authorized licensed use limited to: VIT University- Chennai Campus. Downloaded on October 17,2022 at 07:25:07 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
1454
Fig. 5. Relationship between dynamic evolution and similarity threshold. (a) Form event. (b) Dissolve event. (c) Survive event. (d) Split event. (e) Merge
event. (f) Structure change ratio.
Fig. 6. Detection results of dynamic evolution.
stable vehicle group, and a low similarity threshold can be set
for a highly dynamic vehicle group.
Our method is compared to other dynamic evolution meth-
ods by setting the similarity threshold k to 0.5, and the results
are shown in Fig. 6. The method in [21] cannot detect sur-
vive because its definition of survive is not suitable for highly
dynamic vehicle groups. It cannot detect dynamic evolution
events across time. The method in [20] detects dynamic evolu-
tion events by matching communities at different timestamps.
But it detects fewer events than our method. The method
in [25] detects only a small part of merge and split and it
fails to detect some survive, which leads to the detection of
more form and dissolve than our method.
According to the state of vehicle groups in the next sec-
ond, we first extract features of vehicle groups in simulation
data and label dynamic evolution events. Then, the simulation
Authorized licensed use limited to: VIT University- Chennai Campus. Downloaded on October 17,2022 at 07:25:07 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
IEEE INTERNET OF THINGS JOURNAL, VOL. 9, NO. 2, JANUARY 15, 2022
TABLE II
VIBT E XAMPLE
data in the first 200 s are used to train prediction models
and the data in the last 100 s are used to test models. The
precision rate is shown in Fig. 7(a). ADAboost.M1 [30] has
the best performance, and the average prediction precision of
five dynamic evolution events can reach more than 86%. The
average prediction precision of the decision table (DT) algo-
rithm is only about 76%. The recall rate of each model is
shown in Fig. 7(b). ADAboost.M1’s [30] average recall rate
is 85.9%. The average F1-measure is shown in Fig. 7(c),
ADAboost.M1’s [30] F1-measure value is about 85.88%.
Hence, ADAboost.M1 [30] can predict dynamic evolution
trends of a vehicle group with the best accuracy.
VI. C ONCLUSION
Autonomous vehicle groups can reduce the perception
blind zone of vehicles and increase their perception range.
CHENG et al.: DYNAMIC EVOLUTION METHOD FOR AUTONOMOUS VEHICLE GROUPS IN HIGHWAY SCENE
Fig. 7. Prediction results of dynamic evolution. (a) Prediction precision. (b) Prediction recall. (c) F1-measure.
TABLE III
S IMULATION PARAMETER
Vehicle group dynamic evolution can guide the operation of
autonomous vehicles. Therefore, it is important to construct a
vehicle group model and investigate its dynamic evolution.
This work presents a dynamic evolution method for vehi-
cle groups in a highway scene. Its main contributions are
summarized as follows.
1) This work defines a vehicle group, and proposes an
AVGF method that can perform vehicle group formation
very well and is proved to be especially suitable for a
highway scene with highly dynamic characteristics.
2) It proposes a dynamic evolution method that can detect
more dynamic evolution events than other methods,
e.g., [20], [21], [25], and accurately predict the dynamic
evolution of a vehicle group.
This work focuses on autonomous vehicle groups and
their dynamic evolution. This work can benefit the following
studies.
1) Vehicle groups can be composed of manned vehicles and
autonomous vehicles. The modeling and dynamic evo-
lution methods for these two different types of vehicle
groups are highly desired.
2) For complex scenes, e.g., urban one, the behavior of
vehicle groups is different from that in this work.
Their modeling and dynamic evolution methods remain
undeveloped.
3) Overlapping communities [32], [33] may be useful
for modeling and analyzing complex vehicle groups.
Modeling and analysis methods based on them need to
be developed for vehicle groups in a highway scene.
4) Privacy protection [34]–[40] is an important issue.
Effective schemes should be developed for vehicle
groups.
Authorized licensed use limited to: VIT University- Chennai Campus. Downloaded on October 17,2022 at 07:25:07 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
1455
A PPENDIX
See Tables I–III.
R EFERENCES
[1] P. M. Kebria, A. Khosravi, S. M. Salaken, and S. Nahavandi, “Deep
imitation learning for autonomous vehicles based on convolutional neu-
ral networks,” IEEE/CAA J. Automatica Sinica, vol. 7, no. 1, pp. 82–95,
Jan. 2020, doi: 10.1109/JAS.2019.1911825.
[2] S. Yang, W. Wang, C. Liu, and W. Deng, “Scene understanding in deep
learning-based end-to-end controllers for autonomous vehicles,” IEEE
Trans. Syst., Man, Cybern., Syst., vol. 49, no. 1, pp. 53–63, Jan. 2019,
doi: 10.1109/TSMC.2018.2868372.
[3] Y. Ma, Z. Wang, H. Yang, and L. Yang, “Artificial intelligence
applications in the development of autonomous vehicles: A survey,”
IEEE/CAA J. Automatica Sinica, vol. 7, no. 2, pp. 315–329, Mar. 2020,
doi: 10.1109/JAS.2020.1003021.
[4] J. Wang, C. Jiang, K. Zhang, T. Q. S. Quek, Y. Ren, and L. Hanzo,
“Vehicular sensing networks in a smart city: Principles, technologies
and applications,” IEEE Wireless Commun., vol. 25, no. 1, pp. 122–132,
Feb. 2018, doi: 10.1109/MWC.2017.1600275.
[5] N. Lu, N. Cheng, N. Zhang, X. Shen, and J. W. Mark, “Connected
vehicles: Solutions and challenges,” IEEE Internet Things J., vol. 1,
no. 4, pp. 289–299, Aug. 2014, doi: 10.1109/JIOT.2014.2327587.
[6] J. Wang, C. Jiang, Z. Han, Y. Ren, and L. Hanzo, “Internet of
Vehicles: Sensing-aided transportation information collection and dif-
fusion,” IEEE Trans. Veh. Technol., vol. 67, no. 5, pp. 3813–3825, May
2018, doi: 10.1109/TVT.2018.2796443.
[7] C. Chen, J. Hu, T. Qiu, M. Atiquzzaman, and Z. Ren, “CVCG:
Cooperative V2V-aided transmission scheme based on coalitional game
for popular content distribution in vehicular ad-hoc networks,” IEEE
Trans. Mobile Comput., vol. 18, no. 12, pp. 2811–2828, Dec. 2019,
doi: 10.1109/TMC.2018.2883312.
[8] D. Tian et al., “A distributed position-based protocol for emer-
gency messages broadcasting in vehicular ad hoc networks,” IEEE
Internet Things J., vol. 5, no. 2, pp. 1218–1227, Apr. 2018,
doi: 10.1109/JIOT.2018.2791627.
[9] C. Chen, C. Wang, T. Qiu, M. Atiquzzaman, and D. O. Wu, “Caching
in vehicular named data networking: Architecture, schemes and future
directions,” IEEE Commun. Surveys Tuts., vol. 22, no. 4, pp. 2378–2407,
4th Quart., 2020, doi: 10.1109/COMST.2020.3005361.
[10] J. Cheng, J. Cheng, M. Zhou, F. Liu, S. Gao, and C. Liu, “Routing in
Internet of Vehicles: A review,” IEEE Trans. Intell. Transp. Syst., vol. 16,
no. 5, pp. 2339–2352, Oct. 2015, doi: 10.1109/TITS.2015.2423667.
[11] D. Tian, C. Zhang, X. Duan, Y. Wang, J. Zhou, and Z. Sheng, “A multi-
hop routing protocol for video transmission in IoVs based on cellular
attractor selection,” Future Gener. Comput. Syst., vol. 95, pp. 713–726,
Jun. 2019, doi: 10.1016/j.future.2018.09.070.
[12] G. V. Rossi, Z. Fan, W. H. Chin, and K. K. Leung, “Stable clustering
for ad-hoc vehicle networking,” in Proc. IEEE Wireless Commun. Netw.
Conf. (WCNC), San Francisco, CA, USA, 2017, pp. 1–6.
[13] G. Wolny, “Modified DMAC clustering algorithm for VANETs,” in Proc.
3rd Int. Conf. Syst. Netw. Commun., Sliema, Malta, 2008, pp. 268–273.
1456
[14] M. Ren, L. Khoukhi, H. Labiod, J. Zhang, and V. Veque, “A
mobility-based scheme for dynamic clustering in vehicular ad-hoc
networks (VANETs),” Veh. Commun., vol. 9, pp. 233–241, Jul. 2017,
doi: 10.1016/j.vehcom.2016.12.003.
[15] M. Ren, J. Zhang, L. Khoukhi, H. Labiod, and V. Vèque, “A unified
framework of clustering approach in vehicular ad hoc networks,” IEEE
Trans. Intell. Transp. Syst., vol. 19, no. 5, pp. 1401–1414, May 2018,
doi: 10.1109/TITS.2017.2727226.
[16] D. Zhang, H. Ge, T. Zhang, Y.-Y. Cui, X. Liu, and G. Mao, “New
multi-hop clustering algorithm for vehicular ad hoc networks,” IEEE
Trans. Intell. Transp. Syst., vol. 20, no. 4, pp. 1517–1530, Apr. 2019,
doi: 10.1109/TITS.2018.2853165.
[17] Y. Zhou, X. Wu, and P. Wang, “A novel vehicle clustering algorithm in
intersection scenario,” in Proc. 9th Int. Conf. Adv. Infocomm Technol.
(ICAIT), Chengdu, China, 2017, pp. 431–437.
[18] J. Cheng, G. Yuan, M. Zhou, S. Gao, Z. Huang, and C. Liu, “A
connectivity-prediction-based dynamic clustering model for VANET in
an urban scene,” IEEE Internet Things J., vol. 7, no. 9, pp. 8410–8418,
Sep. 2020, doi: 10.1109/JIOT.2020.2990935.
[19] C. Chen, T. Xiao, T. Qiu, N. Lv, and Q. Pei, “Smart-contract-based eco-
nomical platooning in blockchain-enabled urban Internet of Vehicles,”
IEEE Trans. Ind. Informat., vol. 16, no. 6, pp. 4122–4133, Jun. 2020,
doi: 10.1109/TII.2019.2954213.
[20] G. Palla, A.-L. Barabási, and T. Vicsek, “Quantifying social group
evolution,” Nature, vol. 446, no. 7136, pp. 664–667, Apr. 2007,
doi: 10.1038/nature05670.
[21] S. Asur, S. Parthasarathy, and D. Ucar, “An event-based framework
for characterizing the evolutionary behavior of interaction graphs,”
ACM Trans. Knowl. Discov. Data, vol. 3, no. 4, pp. 1–36, Dec. 2009,
doi: 10.1145/1631162.1631164.
[22] D. Zhuang, J. M. Chang, and M. Li, “Dynamo: Dynamic com-
munity detection by incrementally maximizing modularity,” IEEE
Trans. Knowl. Data Eng., vol. 33, no. 5, pp. 1934–1945, May 2021,
doi: 10.1109/TKDE.2019.2951419.
[23] H. Wang, W. Hu, Z. Qiu, and B. Du, “Nodes’ evolution diversity and link
prediction in social networks,” IEEE Trans. Knowl. Data Eng., vol. 29,
no. 10, pp. 2263–2274, Oct. 2017, doi: 10.1109/TKDE.2017.2728527.
[24] M. E. G. Pavlopoulou, G. Tzortzis, D. Vogiatzis, and G. Paliouras,
“Predicting the evolution of communities in social networks using struc-
tural and temporal features,” in Proc. 12th Int. Workshop Semantic Soc.
Media Adaptation Personalization (SMAP), Bratislava, Slovakia, 2017,
pp. 40–45.
[25] D. Greene, D. Doyle, and P. Cunningham, “Tracking the evolution of
communities in dynamic social networks,” in Proc. Int. Conf. Adv. Soc.
Netw. Anal. Mining, Odense, Denmark, 2010, pp. 176–183.
[26] H. Shen, X. Cheng, K. Cai, and M.-B. Hu, “Detect overlap-
ping and hierarchical community structure in networks,” Physica
A Stat. Mech. Appl., vol. 388, no. 8, pp. 1706–1712, Apr. 2009,
doi: 10.1016/j.physa.2008.12.021.
[27] M. Hall, E. Frank, G. Holmes, B. Pfahringer, P. Reutemann, and
I. H. Witten, “The WEKA data mining software: An update,” ACM
SIGKDD Explor. Newslett., vol. 11, no. 1, pp. 10–18, Nov. 2009,
doi: 10.1145/1656274.1656278.
[28] J. R. Quinlan, C4.5: Programs for Machine Learning. San Francisco,
CA, USA: Morgan Kaufmann, 1993.
[29] R. Kohavi, “The power of decision tables,” in Proc. 8th Eur. Conf. Mach.
Learn., Heraklion, Greece, 1995, pp. 174–189.
[30] Y. Freund and R. E. Schapire, “Experiments with a new boosting
algorithm,” in Proc. ICML, Bari, Italy, 1996, pp. 148–156.
[31] S. J. Russell and P. Norvig, Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach,
London, U.K.: Pearson Educ. LTD, 2016, pp. 724–736.
[32] J. Cheng, M. Chen, M. Zhou, S. Gao, C. Liu, and C. Liu,
“Overlapping community change point detection in an evolving
network,” IEEE Trans. Big Data, vol. 6, no. 1, pp. 189–200, Mar. 2020,
doi: 10.1109/TBDATA.2018.2880780.
[33] J. Cheng, X. Wu, M. Zhou, S. Gao, Z. Huang, and C. Liu, “A novel
method for detecting new overlapping community in complex evolv-
ing networks,” IEEE Trans. Syst., Man, Cybern., Syst., vol. 49, no. 9,
pp. 1832–1844, Sep. 2019, doi: 10.1109/TSMC.2017.2779138.
[34] J. Cui, X. Zhang, H. Zhong, J. Zhang, and L. Liu, “Extensible
conditional privacy protection authentication scheme for secure
vehicular networks in a multi-cloud environment,” IEEE Trans.
Inf. Forensics Security, vol. 15, pp. 1654–1667, Oct. 2019,
doi: 10.1109/TIFS.2019.2946933.
Authorized licensed use limited to: VIT University- Chennai Campus. Downloaded on October 17,2022 at 07:25:07 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
IEEE INTERNET OF THINGS JOURNAL, VOL. 9, NO. 2, JANUARY 15, 2022
[35] C. Han and Y. Shen, “Three-dimensional scene encryption algorithm
based on phase iteration algorithm of the angular-spectral domain,”
IEEE/CAA J. Autom. Sinica, vol. 7, no. 4, pp. 1074–1080, Jul. 2020,
doi: 10.1109/JAS.2019.1911726.
[36] Z. Tan, C. Wang, C. Yan, M. Zhou, and C. Jiang, “Protecting privacy of
location-based services in road networks,” IEEE Trans. Intell. Transp.
Syst., early access, Jul. 6, 2020, doi: 10.1109/TITS.2020.2992232.
[37] X. Wang et al., “Privacy-preserving content dissemination for vehic-
ular social networks: Challenges and solutions,” IEEE Commun.
Surveys Tuts., vol. 21, no. 2, pp. 1314–1345, 2nd Quart., 2019,
doi: 10.1109/COMST.2018.2882064.
[38] P. Zhang, M. Zhou, and G. Fortino, “Security and trust issues in Fog
computing: A survey,” Future Gener. Comput. Syst., vol. 88, pp. 16–17,
Nov. 2018, doi: 10.1016/j.future.2018.05.008.
[39] X. Huang, D. Ye, R. Yu, and L. Shu, “Securing parked vehicle assisted
fog computing with blockchain and optimal smart contract design,”
IEEE/CAA J. Autom. Sinica, vol. 7, no. 2, pp. 426–441, Mar. 2020,
doi: 10.1109/JAS.2020.1003039.
[40] P. Zhang, M. Zhou, and Y. Kong, “A Double-Blind Anonymous
Evaluation-Based Trust Model in Cloud Computing Environments,”
IEEE Trans. Syst. Man Cyber. Syst., vol. 51, no. 3, pp. 1805–1816,
Mar. 2021, doi: 10.1109/TSMC.2019.2906310.
Jiujun Cheng received the Ph.D. degree
from Beijing University of Posts and
Telecommunications, Beijing, China, in 2006.
He is currently a Professor with the Ministry
of Education Key Laboratory of Embedded
System and Service Computing, Tongji University,
Shanghai, China. He was a Senior Visiting
Professor with Beijing University of Posts and
Telecommunications, Beijing, China, in 2020. He
has over 80 publications, including conference
and journal articles. His current research interests
include mobile computing, complex networks, Internet of Vehicles, and
autonomous cars.
Mingdong Ju received the B.S. degree in computer
science from Tongji University, Shanghai, China,
in 2019, where he is currently pursuing the mas-
ter’s degree with the College of Electronic and
Information Engineering.
His research interests include Internet of Vehicles
and deep learning.
MengChu Zhou (Fellow, IEEE) received the
B.S. degree in control engineering from Nanjing
University of Science and Technology, Nanjing,
China, in 1983, the M.S. degree in automatic control
from Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing, China,
in 1986, and the Ph.D. degree in computer and
systems engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic
Institute, Troy, NY, USA, in 1990.
He joined the New Jersey Institute of Technology,
Newark, NJ, USA, in 1990, and is currently a
Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer
Engineering. He has over 900 publications, including 12 books, 600+ journal
papers (500+ in IEEE transactions), 29 patents, and 29 book-chapters. His
research interests are in Petri nets, intelligent automation, Internet of Things,
big data, Web services, and intelligent transportation.
Dr. Zhou is a Founding Editor of IEEE P RESS B OOK S ERIES ON S YSTEMS
S CIENCE AND E NGINEERING and the Editor-in-Chief of IEEE/CAA
J OURNAL OF AUTOMATICA S INICA. He is a Fellow of International
Federation of Automatic Control, American Association for the Advancement
of Science, and Chinese Association of Automation.
CHENG et al.: DYNAMIC EVOLUTION METHOD FOR AUTONOMOUS VEHICLE GROUPS IN HIGHWAY SCENE
Cong Liu received the B.S. and M.S. degrees in
computer science and technology from Shandong
University of Science and Technology, Qingdao,
China, in 2013 and 2015, respectively, and the
Ph.D. degree in computer science and information
systems from Eindhoven University of Technology,
Eindhoven, The Netherlands, in 2019.
He is currently a Professor with Shandong
University of Technology, Zibo, China. His research
interests are in the areas of Internet of Vehicles, pro-
cess mining, Petri nets, and software data analytics.
Shangce Gao (Senior Member, IEEE) received the
Ph.D. degree in innovative life science from the
University of Toyama, Toyama, Japan, in 2011.
He is currently an Associate Professor with
the University of Toyama. He has authored over
90 publications in referred journals and confer-
ence proceedings. His current research interests
include nature-inspired technologies, mobile com-
puting, machine learning, and neural networks.
Dr. Gao was a recipient of the Best Paper Award
at the IEEE International Conference on Progress
in Informatics and Computing, the Shanghai Rising-Star Scientist Award,
the Chen-Guang Scholar of Shanghai Award, the Outstanding Academic
Performance Award of IEICE, and the Outstanding Academic Achievement
Award of IPSJ.
Authorized licensed use limited to: VIT University- Chennai Campus. Downloaded on October 17,2022 at 07:25:07 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
1457
Abdullah Abusorrah (Senior Member, IEEE)
received the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering
from the University of Nottingham, Nottingham,
U.K., in 2007.
He is a Professor with the Department of
Electrical and Computer Engineering, King
Abdulaziz University, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, where
he is the Head of the Center for Renewable Energy
and Power Systems. His field of interest includes
energy systems, smart grid, and system analyses.
Changjun Jiang received the Ph.D. degree from
the Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of
Science, Beijing, China, in 1995.
He is currently the Leader with the Key
Laboratory of the Ministry of Education for
Embedded System and Service Computing, Tongji
University, Shanghai, China.
Dr. Jiang was a recipient of the one international
prize and seven prizes in the field of science and
technology. He is an IET Fellow and an Honorary
Professor with Brunel University London.