Antenna Combiner for Periodic Broadcast V2V Communication Under Relaxed Worst-Case Propagation

Abstract

The performance of a previously developed analog combining network (ACN) of phase shifters for periodic broadcast vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communication is investigated. The original ACN was designed to maximize the sum of signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs) for <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$K$</tex-math> </inline-formula> consecutive cooperative awareness messages (CAMs). The design was based on the assumption of a dominant propagation path with an angle of arrival (AOA) that is constant for <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$K$</tex-math> </inline-formula> messages. In this work, we relax this assumption by allowing the AOA and path-loss (PL) of the dominant path to be time-variant. Assuming a highway scenario with a line of sight (LOS) propagation between vehicles, we use affine approximations to model the time variation of different path quantities, including the PL, the relative distance-dependent phase shift between antennas, and the AOA-dependent far-field function of the antennas. By leveraging these approximations, we analytically derive the ACN sum-SNR as each one of these quantities varies over <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$K$</tex-math> </inline-formula> CAMs. Moreover, we suggest a design rule for a phase slope that is robust against time variation of the dominant path and optimal under time-invariant conditions. Finally, we validate this design rule using numerical computations and an example of vehicular communication antenna elements.