Practical Evaluation of mm-Wave Communication for Automotive Applications in a Mixed Urban Area of London

Intelligent vehicles or smart cars are considered to be capable of reducing the high mortality rate that occurs on roads globally. The different applications of intelligent vehicles i.e., vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) or vehicle-to-infrastructure networks (V2I), are collectively called vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communications which has the endorsement of the international standard IEEE 802.11p. It is widely expected that V2X can diminish traffic gridlocks and aid the drivers with information such as road status and weather forecast in order to prevent traffic accidents. The aim of this paper is to generate viable mm-Wave channel parameters for V2V scenario in a specific urban area in London as a benchmark for future development. Thus, a thorough evaluation of the implemented V2V mm-Wave propagation channel is performed so as to determine the main constraint factors, such as the signal fading, shadowing, reflection, refraction, scattering and Doppler effect, that can affect V2V communication and connectivity. We analyse comparatively the simulation results of V2V channel propagation parameters using the geometry-based efficient propagation simulator for V2V communications with the experimental measurements conducted using our testbed setup in Hendon area of London UK, which is a combination of urban and suburban streets, with hill top and express way in terms of roadside environments. It is found that i) the simulation results are consistent with the practical measurement; and ii) the simulation at higher mmWave frequencies shows that signal can be detected up to 200m in the urban area irrespective of it being highly non-line of sight environment.