Coverage and connectivity analysis of millimeter wave vehicular networks

Abstract

The next generations of vehicles will require data transmission rates in the order of terabytes per driving hour, to support advanced automotive services. This unprecedented amount of data to be exchanged goes beyond the capabilities of existing communication technologies for vehicular communication and calls for new solutions. A possible answer to this growing demand for ultra-high transmission speeds can be found in the millimeter-wave (mmWave) bands which, however, are subject to high signal attenuation and challenging propagation characteristics. In particular, mmWave links are typically directional, to benefit from the resulting beamforming gain, and require precise alignment of the transmitter and the receiver beams, an operation which may increase the latency of the communication and lead to deafness due to beam misalignment. In this paper, we propose a stochastic model for characterizing the beam coverage and connectivity probability in mmWave automotive networks. The purpose is to exemplify some of the complex and interesting tradeoffs that have to be considered when designing solutions for vehicular scenarios based on mmWave links. The results show that the performance of the automotive nodes in highly mobile mmWave systems strictly depends on the specific environment in which the vehicles are deployed, and must account for several automotive-specific features such as the nodes speed, the beam alignment periodicity, the base stations density and the antenna geometry. Index TermsVehicular communication (V2X), millimeter wave (mmWave), stochastic geometry, connectivity analysis, mobility.Given the simplicity of their topology and their high level of automation, highway scenarios have been heavily investigated in the literature for evaluating the connectivity performance of moving nodes in vehicular networks [11]-[13]. In particular, [11] analyzes the performance of multi-hop transport protocols in a multi-lane highway environment, with particular emphasis on the effect (in terms of throughput and latency) of tuning the transmission power. In [12], the authors conducted a realistic analysis of the vehicular ad hoc network topology by integrating realistic microscopic mobility traces and real database traffic demand with realistic channel models, taking into account the effect of vehicles on the received signal power. The article in [13] provides a closed form expression of the achievable throughput of infrastructure-based vehicular networks under a cooperative communication strategy, exploring the combined use of V2I and V2V communications to facilitate the data transmission. However, such analyses strictly deal with DSRC systems operating at 5.8 GHz, whose propagation characteristics are completely different from those of mmWave channels. Furthermore, in conventional vehicular systems, transmissions are mostly omnidirectional (though beamforming or other directional transmissions can be performed after a physical link between the nodes has been established). These solutions are therefore unsuitable fo...

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