An Emulation Framework for Evaluating V2X Communications in C-ITS Applications

C-ITS enhances transportation systems with advanced communication tech, enabling vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure data exchange for real-time decision-making. The thesis explores C-ITS concepts, DSRC, and C-V2X tech, and proposes a versatile C-ITS framework for app prototyping and communication evaluation. Real-world tests and simulations validate its potential to improve road safety and efficiency, suggesting integration opportunities for stakeholders and promoting a smarter, sustainable transportation ecosystem

Towards Vehicle-to-everything Autonomous Driving: A Survey on Collaborative Perception

Vehicle-to-everything (V2X) autonomous driving opens up a promising direction for developing a new generation of intelligent transportation systems. Collaborative perception (CP) as an essential component to achieve V2X can overcome the inherent limitations of individual perception, including occlusion and long-range perception. In this survey, we provide a comprehensive review of CP methods for V2X scenarios, bringing a profound and in-depth understanding to the community. Specifically, we first introduce the architecture and workflow of typical V2X systems, which affords a broader perspective to understand the entire V2X system and the role of CP within it. Then, we thoroughly summarize and analyze existing V2X perception datasets and CP methods. Particularly, we introduce numerous CP methods from various crucial perspectives, including collaboration stages, roadside sensors placement, latency compensation, performance-bandwidth trade-off, attack/defense, pose alignment, etc. Moreover, we conduct extensive experimental analyses to compare and examine current CP methods, revealing some essential and unexplored insights. Specifically, we analyze the performance changes of different methods under different bandwidths, providing a deep insight into the performance-bandwidth trade-off issue. Also, we examine methods under different LiDAR ranges. To study the model robustness, we further investigate the effects of various simulated real-world noises on the performance of different CP methods, covering communication latency, lossy communication, localization errors, and mixed noises. In addition, we look into the sim-to-real generalization ability of existing CP methods. At last, we thoroughly discuss issues and challenges, highlighting promising directions for future efforts. Our codes for experimental analysis will be public at https://github.com/memberRE/Collaborative-Perception.Comment: 19 page

Radio resource management for V2X in cellular systems

The thesis focuses on the provision of cellular vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communications, which have attracted great interest for 5G due to the potential of improving traffic safety and enabling new services related to intelligent transportation systems. These types of services have strict requirements on reliability, access availability, and end-to-end (E2E) latency. V2X requires advanced network management techniques that must be developed based on the characteristics of the networks and traffic requirements. The integration of the Sidelink (SL), which enables the direct communication between vehicles (i.e., vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V)) without passing through the base station into cellular networks is a promising solution for enhancing the performance of V2X in cellular systems. In this thesis, we addressed some of the challenges arising from the integration of V2V communication in cellular systems and validated the potential of this technology by providing appropriate resource management solutions. Our main contributions have been in the context of radio access network slicing, mode selection, and radio resource allocation mechanisms. With regard to the first research direction that focuses on the RAN slicing management, a novel strategy based on offline Q-learning and softmax decision-making has been proposed as an enhanced solution to determine the adequate split of resources between a slice for eMBB communications and a slice for V2X. Then, starting from the outcome of the off-line Q-learning algorithm, a low-complexity heuristic strategy has been proposed to achieve further improvements in the use of resources. The proposed solution has been compared against proportional and fixed reference schemes. The extensive performance assessment have revealed the ability of the proposed algorithms to improve network performance compared to the reference schemes, especially in terms of resource utilization, throughput, latency and outage probability. Regarding the second research direction that focuses on the mode selection, two different mode selection solutions referred to as MSSB and MS-RBRS strategies have been proposed for V2V communication over a cellular network. The MSSB strategy decides when it is appropriate to use one or the other mode, i.e. sidelink or cellular, for the involved vehicles, taking into account the quality of the links between V2V users, the available resources, and the network traffic load situation. Moreover, the MS-RBRS strategy not only selects the appropriate mode of operation but also decides efficiently the amount of resources needed by V2V links in each mode and allows reusing RBs between different SL users while guaranteeing the minimum signal to interference requirements. The conducted simulations have revealed that the MS-RBRS and MSSB strategies are beneficial in terms of throughput, radio resource utilization, outage probability and latency under different offered loads comparing to the reference scheme. Last, we have focused on the resource allocation problem including jointly mode selection and radio resource scheduling. For the mode selection, a novel mode selection has been presented to decide when it is appropriate to select sidelink mode and use a distributed approach for radio resource allocation or cellular mode and use a centralized radio resource allocation. It takes into account three aspects: the quality of the links between V2V users, the available resources, and the latency. As for the radio resource allocation, the proposed approach includes a distributed radio resource allocation for sidelink mode and a centralized radio resource allocation for cellular mode. The proposed strategy supports dynamic assignments by allowing transmission over mini-slots. A simulation-based analysis has shown that the proposed strategies improved the network performance in terms of latency of V2V services, packet success rate and resource utilization under different network loads.La tesis se centra en la provisión de comunicaciones para vehículos sistemas celulares (V2X: Vehicle to Everything), que han atraído un gran interés en el contexto de 5G debido a su potencial de mejorar la seguridad del tráfico y habilitar nuevos servicios relacionados con los sistemas inteligentes de transporte. Estos tipos de servicios tienen requisitos estrictos en términos fiabilidad, disponibilidad de acceso y latencia de extremo a extremo (E2E). Para ello, V2X requiere técnicas avanzadas de gestión de red que deben desarrollarse en función de las características de las redes y los requisitos de tráfico. La integración del Sidelink (SL), que permite la comunicación directa entre vehículos (es decir, vehículo a vehículo (V2V)) sin pasar por la estación base de las redes celulares, es una solución prometedora para mejorar el rendimiento de V2X en el sistema celular. En esta tesis, abordamos algunos de los desafíos derivados de la integración de la comunicación V2V en los sistemas celulares y validamos el potencial de esta tecnología al proporcionar soluciones de gestión de recursos adecuadas. Nuestras principales contribuciones han sido en el contexto del denominado "slicing" de redes de acceso radio, la selección de modo y los mecanismos de asignación de recursos radio. Respecto a la primera dirección de investigación que se centra en la gestión del RAN slicing, se ha propuesto una estrategia novedosa basada en Q-learning y toma de decisiones softmax como una solución para determinar la división adecuada de recursos entre un slice para comunicaciones eMBB y un slice para V2X. Luego, a partir del resultado del algoritmo de Q-learning, se ha propuesto una estrategia heurística de baja complejidad para lograr mejoras adicionales en el uso de los recursos. La solución propuesta se ha comparado con esquemas de referencia proporcionales y fijos. La evaluación ha revelado la capacidad de los algoritmos propuestos para mejorar el rendimiento de la red en comparación con los esquemas de referencia, especialmente en términos de utilización de recursos, rendimiento, y latencia . Con respecto a la segunda dirección de investigación que se centra en la selección de modo, se han propuesto dos soluciones de diferentes llamadas estrategias MSSB y MS-RBRS para la comunicación V2V a través de una red celular. La estrategia MSSB decide cuándo es apropiado usar el modo SL o el modo celular, para los vehículos involucrados, teniendo en cuenta la calidad de los enlaces entre los usuarios de V2V, los recursos disponibles y la situación de carga de tráfico de la red. Además, la estrategia MS-RBRS no solo selecciona el modo de operación apropiado, sino que también decide eficientemente la cantidad de recursos que los enlaces V2V necesitan en cada modo, y permite que los RB se reutilicen entre diferentes usuarios de SL al tiempo que garantiza requisitos mínimos de señal a interferencia. Se ha presentado un análisis basado en simulación para evaluar el desempeño de las estrategias propuestas. Finalmente, nos hemos centrado en el problema conjunto de la selección de modo y la asignación de recursos de radio. Para la selección de modo, se ha presentado una nueva estrategia para decidir cuándo es apropiado seleccionar el modo SL y usar un enfoque distribuido para la asignación de recursos de radio o el modo celular y usar la asignación de recursos de radio centralizada. Tiene en cuenta tres aspectos: la calidad de los enlaces entre los usuarios de V2V, los recursos disponibles y la latencia. En términos de asignación de recursos de radio, el enfoque propuesto incluye una asignación de recursos de radio distribuida para el modo SL y una asignación de recursos de radio centralizada para el modo celular. La estrategia propuesta admite asignaciones dinámicas al permitir la transmisión a través de mini-slots. Los resultados muestran las mejoras en términos de latencia, tasa de recepción y la utilización de recursos bajo diferentes cargas de red.Postprint (published version

Cellular-V2X Communications for Platooning: Design and Evaluation

Abstract: Platooning is a cooperative driving application where autonomous/semi-autonomous vehicles move on the same lane in a train-like manner, keeping a small constant inter-vehicle distance, in order to reduce fuel consumption and gas emissions and to achieve safe and efficient transport. To this aim, they may exploit multiple on-board sensors (e.g., radars, lidars, positioning systems) and direct vehicle-to-vehicle communications to synchronize their manoeuvres. The main objective of this paper is to discuss the design choices and factors that determine the performance of a platooning application, when exploiting the emerging cellular vehicle-to-everything (C-V2X) communication technology and considering the scheduled mode, specified by 3GPP for communications over the sidelink assisted by the eNodeB. Since no resource management algorithm is currently mandated by 3GPP for this new challenging context, we focus on analyzing the feasibility and performance of the dynamic scheduling approach, with platoon members asking for radio resources on a per-packet basis. We consider two ways of implementing dynamic scheduling, currently unspecified by 3GPP: the sequential mode, that is somehow reminiscent of time division multiple access solutions based on IEEE 802.11p – till now the only investigated access technology for platooning – and the simultaneous mode with spatial frequency reuse enabled by the eNodeB. The evaluation conducted through system-level simulations provides helpful insights about the proposed configurations and C-V2X parameter settings that mainly affect the reliability and latency performance of data exchange in platoons, under different load settings. Achieved results show that the proposed simultaneous mode succeeds in reducing the latency in the update cycle in each vehicle’s controller, thus enabling future high-density platooning scenarios

Video Streaming over Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks: A Comparative Study and Future Perspectives

Vehicular  Ad Hoc Network  (VANET) is emerged as an important research area that provides ubiquitous short-range connectivity among moving vehicles.  This network enables efficient traffic safety and infotainment applications. One of the promising applications is video transmission in vehicle-to-vehicle or vehicle-to-infrastructure environments.  But, video streaming over vehicular environment is a daunting task due to high movement of vehicles. This paper presents a survey on state-of-arts of video streaming over VANET. Furthermore, taxonomy of vehicular video transmission is highlighted in this paper with special focus on significant applications and their requirements with challenges, video content sharing, multi-source video streaming and video broadcast services. The comparative study of the paper compares the video streaming schemes based on type of error resilient technique, objective of study, summary of their study, the utilized simulator and the type of video sharing.  Lastly, we discussed the open issues and research directions related to video communication over VANET

C-ITS road-side unit deployment on highways with ITS road-side systems : a techno-economic approach

Connectivity and cooperation are considered important prerequisites to automated driving, as they are crucial elements in increasing the safety of future automated vehicles and their full integration in the overall transport system. Although many European Member States, as part of the C-Roads Platform, have implemented and are still implementing Road-side Units (RSUs) for Cooperative Intelligent Transportation Systems (C-ITS) within pilot deployment projects, the platform aspires a wide extension of deployments in the coming years. Therefore, this paper investigates techno-economic aspects of C-ITS RSU deployments from a road authority viewpoint. A two-phased approach is used, in which firstly the optimal RSU locations are determined, taking into account existing road-side infrastructure. Secondly, a cost model translates the amount of RSUs into financial results. It was found that traffic density has a significant impact on required RSU density, hence impacting costs. Furthermore, major cost saving can be obtained by leveraging existing road-side infrastructure. The proposed methodology is valuable for other member states, and in general, to any other country aspiring to roll out C-ITS road infrastructure. Results can be used to estimate required investment costs based on legacy infrastructure, as well as to benchmark with the envisioned benefits from the deployed C-ITS services

Content Sharing in Mobile Networks with Infrastructure: Planning and Management

This thesis focuses on mobile ad-hoc networks (with pedestrian or vehicular mobility) having infrastructure support. We deal with the problems of design, deployment and management of such networks. A first issue to address concerns infrastructure itself: how pervasive should it be in order for the network to operate at the same time efficiently and in a cost-effective manner? How should the units composing it (e.g., access points) be placed? There are several approaches to such questions in literature, and this thesis studies and compares them. Furthermore, in order to effectively design the infrastructure, we need to understand how and how much it will be used. As an example, what is the relationship between infrastructure-to-node and node-to-node communication? How far away, in time and space, do data travel before its destination is reached? A common assumption made when dealing with such problems is that perfect knowledge about the current and future node mobility is available. In this thesis, we also deal with the problem of assessing the impact that an imperfect, limited knowledge has on network performance. As far as the management of the network is concerned, this thesis presents a variant of the paradigm known as publish-and-subscribe. With respect to the original paradigm, our goal was to ensure a high probability of finding the requested content, even in presence of selfish, uncooperative nodes, or even nodes whose precise goal is harming the system. Each node is allowed to get from the network an amount of content which corresponds to the amount of content provided to other nodes. Nodes with caching capabilities are assisted in using their cache in order to improve the amount of offered conten

Towards Tactile Internet in Beyond 5G Era: Recent Advances, Current Issues and Future Directions

Tactile Internet (TI) is envisioned to create a paradigm shift from the content-oriented communications to steer/control-based communications by enabling real-time transmission of haptic information (i.e., touch, actuation, motion, vibration, surface texture) over Internet in addition to the conventional audiovisual and data traffics. This emerging TI technology, also considered as the next evolution phase of Internet of Things (IoT), is expected to create numerous opportunities for technology markets in a wide variety of applications ranging from teleoperation systems and Augmented/Virtual Reality (AR/VR) to automotive safety and eHealthcare towards addressing the complex problems of human society. However, the realization of TI over wireless media in the upcoming Fifth Generation (5G) and beyond networks creates various non-conventional communication challenges and stringent requirements in terms of ultra-low latency, ultra-high reliability, high data-rate connectivity, resource allocation, multiple access and quality-latency-rate tradeoff. To this end, this paper aims to provide a holistic view on wireless TI along with a thorough review of the existing state-of-the-art, to identify and analyze the involved technical issues, to highlight potential solutions and to propose future research directions. First, starting with the vision of TI and recent advances and a review of related survey/overview articles, we present a generalized framework for wireless TI in the Beyond 5G Era including a TI architecture, the main technical requirements, the key application areas and potential enabling technologies. Subsequently, we provide a comprehensive review of the existing TI works by broadly categorizing them into three main paradigms; namely, haptic communications, wireless AR/VR, and autonomous, intelligent and cooperative mobility systems. Next, potential enabling technologies across physical/Medium Access Control (MAC) and network layers are identified and discussed in detail. Also, security and privacy issues of TI applications are discussed along with some promising enablers. Finally, we present some open research challenges and recommend promising future research directions

EDDA: An Efficient Distributed Data Replication Algorithm in VANETs

Efficient data dissemination in vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) is a challenging issue due to the dynamic nature of the network. To improve the performance of data dissemination, we study distributed data replication algorithms in VANETs for exchanging information and computing in an arbitrarily-connected network of vehicle nodes. To achieve low dissemination delay and improve the network performance, we control the number of message copies that can be disseminated in the network and then propose an efficient distributed data replication algorithm (EDDA). The key idea is to let the data carrier distribute the data dissemination tasks to multiple nodes to speed up the dissemination process. We calculate the number of communication stages for the network to enter into a balanced status and show that the proposed distributed algorithm can converge to a consensus in a small number of communication stages. Most of the theoretical results described in this paper are to study the complexity of network convergence. The lower bound and upper bound are also provided in the analysis of the algorithm. Simulation results show that the proposed EDDA can efficiently disseminate messages to vehicles in a specific area with low dissemination delay and system overhead