Performance Evaluation and Demonstration of Real-Time Vehicle Control Information Exchange Using 5G New Radio Sidelink for Automated Follower Truck Platooning

Fifth generation mobile communication system (5G) mobile operators need to explore new use cases and/or applications together with vertical industries, the industries that are potential users of 5G, in order to fully exploit the new 5G capabilities in terms of its application. Vehicleto-Everything (V2X) communications for platooning are considered to be one of new 5G use cases whose ultra reliable and low latency communication (URLLC) aspects are required. The authors build a field experimental environment, towards application to truck platooning, with actual large-size trucks and a prototype system, for 5G New Radio (NR) technology based V2X communications. Its most distinctive feature is that the 5G NR-V2X prototype system is equipped with UE-to-UE radio interface (i.e., sidelink) for V2V Direct communication, in addition to the traditional radio interfaces between BS and UE for V2N/V2N2V communications. This paper presents performance evaluation and demonstration of real-time vehicle control information exchange using over the sideink of 5G NR-V2X prototype system for automated follower truck platooning. This paper evaluates the V2V Direct communication latency and reliability performance of the sidelink, and clarify 5G NR sidelink achieves lower peak of latency and higher packet reception rate in V2V Direct communication performance than an optical wireless communication system product. Then, it also introduces a 5G URLLC use case demonstration of automated follower truck platooning trial employed with the prototype system in a public expressway environment.