Evaluation of IEEE 802.11ad for mmWave V2V Communications

Autonomous vehicles can construct a more accurate perception of their surrounding environment by exchanging rich sensor data with nearby vehicles. Such exchange can require larger bandwidths than currently provided by ITS-G5/DSRC and Cellular V2X. Millimeter wave (mmWave) communications can provide higher bandwidth and could complement current V2X standards. Recent studies have started investigating the potential of IEEE 802.11ad to support high bandwidth vehicular communications. This paper introduces the first performance evaluation of the IEEE 802.11ad MAC (Medium Access Control) and beamforming mechanism for mmWave V2V communications. The study highlights existing opportunities and shortcomings that should guide the development of mmWave communications for V2V communications.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figures, 1 tabl

Sub-6GHz Assisted MAC for Millimeter Wave Vehicular Communications

Sub-6GHz vehicular communications (using DSRC, ITS-G5 or C-V2X) have been developed to support active safety applications. Future connected and automated driving applications can require larger bandwidth and higher data rates than currently supported by sub-6GHz V2X technologies. This has triggered the interest in developing mmWave vehicular communications. However, solutions are necessary to solve the challenges resulting from the use of high-frequency bands and the high mobility of vehicles. This paper contributes to this active research area by proposing a sub-6GHz assisted mmWave MAC that decouples the mmWave data and control planes. The proposal offloads mmWave MAC control functions (beam alignment, neighbor identification and scheduling) to a sub-6GHz V2X technology, and reserves the mmWave channel for the data plane. This approach improves the operation of the MAC as the control functions benefit from the longer range, and the broadcast and omnidirectional transmissions of sub-6GHz V2X technologies. This simulation study demonstrates that the proposed sub-6GHz assisted mmWave MAC reduces the control overhead and delay, and increases the spatial sharing compared to a mmWave-only configuration (IEEE 802.11ad tailored to vehicular networks). The proposed MAC is here evaluated for V2V communications using 802.11p for the control plane and 802.11ad for the data plane. However, the proposal is not restricted to these technologies, and can be adapted to other technologies such as C-V2X and 5G NR.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figure

Beam Alignment for Millimetre Wave Links with Motion Prediction of Autonomous Vehicles

Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITSs) require ultra-low end-to-end delays and multi-gigabit-per-second data transmission. Millimetre Waves (mmWaves) communications can fulfil these requirements. However, the increased mobility of Connected and Autonomous Vehicles (CAVs), requires frequent beamforming - thus introducing increased overhead. In this paper, a new beamforming algorithm is proposed able to achieve overhead-free beamforming training. Leveraging from the CAVs sensory data, broadcast with Dedicated Short Range Communications (DSRC) beacons, the position and the motion of a CAV can be estimated and beamform accordingly. To minimise the position errors, an analysis of the distinct error components was presented. The network performance is further enhanced by adapting the antenna beamwidth with respect to the position error. Our algorithm outperforms the legacy IEEE 802.11ad approach proving it a viable solution for the future ITS applications and services.Comment: Proc. of IET Colloquium on Antennas, Propagation & RF Technology for Transport and Autonomous Platforms, to appea

IEEE 802.11ad V2V-radar : a joint vehicle-to-vehicle communication and automotive radar system

Proprietary millimeter wave (mmWave) radar technologies are widely used in luxury cars to enable active safety functions such as cruise control and collision avoidance. Vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communication using the dedicated short range communication (DSRC) technology permits basic low-latency safety applications such as forward collision detection in the 5.9 GHz band. The DSRC technology supports only low data rates, which is not sufficient to handle the gigabytes that can be generated in the next generation vehicles. This challenge can, however, be overcome by using mmWave V2V communication technology that has not been adopted yet by the automotive industry. In this thesis, we propose an IEEE 802.11ad V2V-radar system that leverages the waveform and the typical receiver algorithms of a mmWave consumer WLAN standard to enable a joint framework of vehicular communication and radar technologies at 60 GHz. It will lead to efficient spectrum usage, enhanced performance and increased penetration in the vehicles with minimal size and cost of the hardware. Our theoretical analyses and numerical simulations show promising results; Gbps data rate is achieved simultaneously with cm-level range accuracy, cm/s-level velocity accuracy and high probability of detection at a significantly low false alarm rate.Electrical and Computer Engineerin