Channel Characterization for Vehicle-to-Infrastructure Communications in Millimeter-Wave Band

Abstract

In recent years, the intelligent transport system (ITS) has been developed rapidly because of global urbanization and industrialization, which is considered as the key enabling technology to improve road safety, traffic efficiency, and driving experience. To achieve these goals, vehicles need to be equipped with a large number of sensors to enable the generation and exchange of high-rate data streams. Recently, millimeter-wave (mmWave) technology has been introduced as a means of meeting such a high data rate requirement. In this paper, a comprehensive study on the channel characteristics for vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) link in mmWave band (22.1-23.1 GHz) for various road environments and deployment configurations is conducted. The self-developed ray-tracing (RT) simulator is employed with the calibrated electromagnetic (EM) parameters. The three-dimensional (3D) environment models are reconstructed from the OpenStreetMap (OSM). In the simulations, not only the vehicle user equipment (UE) moves, but also the other vehicles such as cars, delivery vans, and buses move around the vehicle UE. Moreover, the impacts of the receiver (Rx) multiple antennas and beam switching technologies at the vehicle UE are evaluated as well. The channel parameters of the V2I link in mmWave band, including received power, Rician K-factor, root-mean-square delay spread, and angular spreads are explored in the target scenarios under different simulation deployments. This work aims to help the researchers understand the channel characteristics of the V2I links in mmWave band and support the link-level and system-level design for future vehicular communications.