Survey and Perspectives of Vehicular Wi-Fi versus Sidelink Cellular-V2X in the 5G Era

Alessandro Bazzi,Alberto Zanella,Michele Menarini,Giammarco Cecchini,Barbara M. Masini

doi:10.3390/fi11060122

Abstract

The revolution of cooperative connected and automated vehicles is about to begin and a key milestone is the introduction of short range wireless communications between cars. Given the tremendous expected market growth, two different technologies have been standardized by international companies and consortia, namely IEEE 802.11p, out for nearly a decade, and short range cellular-vehicle-to-anything (C-V2X), of recent definition. In both cases, evolutions are under discussion. The former is only decentralized and based on a sensing before transmitting access, while the latter is based on orthogonal resources that can be also managed by an infrastructure. Although studies have been conducted to highlight advantages and drawbacks of both, doubts still remain. In this work, with a reference to the literature and the aid of large scale simulations in realistic urban and highway scenarios, we provide an insight in such a comparison, also trying to isolate the contribution of the physical and medium access control layers.

Highlights

Wireless communications and the wide distribution of the Internet have completely changed society over the last twenty years
Results are not able to distinguish the contribution from the PHY and medium access control (MAC) layers and it is difficult to infer what happens if the PHY layer is re-designed in IEEE 802.11p
With these limitations in mind, in the following, we provide results from large scale simulations performed in different scenarios and with different modulation and coding schemes (MCSs); in addition, we consider an ideally modified IEEE 802.11p with a PHY layer providing the same performance as that of C-V2X

Summary

Introduction

Wireless communications and the wide distribution of the Internet have completely changed society over the last twenty years. With an unpredictable period of transition, someday vehicles will be all autonomous and connected, with the promise of no more deaths on the road, of more efficiency of traffic flows, and of more comfort for all passengers. One of the main first steps along this path is the transformation of cars and trucks from isolated road-users, adhering common rules, to communicating, coordinated, and cooperative parts of an ecosystem. Such transformation passes through the capability of vehicles to connect to each other and to the rest of the world, and a key role is played by wireless short-range technologies. Short-range is required to allow scalability of the service as well as to avoid risks of areas where the connectivity is not available

Results

Discussion

Conclusion