Received: Added at production Revised: Added at production Accepted: Added at production DOI: xxx/xxxx PMCD: Platoon - Merging approach for Cooperative Driving Anirudh Paranjothi* 1 | Mohammed Atiquzzaman 1 | Mohammad S. Khan 2 1 School of Computer Science, University of Oklahoma, Norman, Oklahoma, USA 2 Department of Computing, East Tennessee State University, Johnson City, Tennessee, USA Correspondence Anirudh Paranjothi, School of Computer Science, University of Oklahoma, Norman, Oklahoma, USA. Email: anirudh.paranjothi@ou.edu Summary The advancement in Vehicular ad-hoc network (VANET) and Cooperative adaptive cruise control (CACC) facilitates platooning as a promising framework to improve road capacity, on-road safety, and energy efficiency. Platoon based communication requires high co-operation among platoon members to perform basic platoon maneu- vers such as merging, splitting, and lane change. Accomplishing a platoon-merge maneuver is still challenging due to the presence of strong interference caused by an unintended vehicle joining in the middle of a platoon resulting in aborting a platoon merge maneuver without desired joining the vehicle. Previous researchers have analyzed the effect of interference in the platoon-merge maneuver, but they did not provide a solution to accomplish a platoon merge arising from an unin- tended vehicle interferes in the middle of a platoon. We proposed an approach called Platoon-Merging for Cooperative Driving (PMCD), which ensures effective platoon- merge in all possible scenarios, including high dense vehicle regions like downtown regions where the possibility of an unintended vehicle interfering a platoon is high. The novelty of PMCD lies in the fact that our proposed technique dynamically adapts between interference and non-interference regions. Simulations were con- ducted using ns-3 and PERMIT simulators. The results showed that PMCD provides the best performance at all vehicle densities and simulation times. KEYWORDS: VANET, platoon, platoon maneuvers, interference, platoon-merge 1 INTRODUCTION The advancement in Vehicular ad-hoc network (VANET) and Cooperative adaptive cruise control (CACC) facilitates vehicles to organized into groups of close-following vehicles commonly known as a platoon 1 . Platooning has been identified as a promising framework to improve road capacity, on-road safety, and energy efficiency through platoon management protocols. Platoon is a complex physical system, composed of a platoon leader, and one or more followers, also known as platoon members. The platoon leader is usually the first vehicle of the platoon, which defines the speed, distance, and direction for platoon members, responsible for performing basic maneuvers like platoon formation, merging, splitting, etc. by exchanging various commands. Platoon members, also known as platoon followers are the vehicles that pursue each other closely in a platoon. To maintain the stability of the platoon, the platoon leader sends speed, distance, and direction to its members at a constant time interval (t). In addition to that, each platoon member receives information such as speed, position, distance, and direction from its preceding vehicle. The studies and research on platooning have been in vogue for a number of years now. The most popular platooning research projects are California Partners for Advanced Transit and Highways (PATH), Safe Road Trains for the Environment