A survey on vehicle-to-vehicle propagation channels

Abstract

Traffic telematics applications are currently under intense research and development for making transportation safer, more efficient, and more environmentally friendly. Reliable traffic telematics applications and services require vehicle-to-vehicle wireless communications that can provide robust connectivity, typically at data rates between 1 and 10 Mb/s. The development of such VTV communications systems and standards require, in turn, accurate models for the VTV propagation channel. A key characteristic of VTV channels is their temporal variability and inherent non-stationarity, which has major impact on data packet transmission reliability and latency. This article provides an overview of existing VTV channel measurement campaigns in a variety of important environments, and the channel characteristics (such as delay spreads and Doppler spreads) therein. We also describe the most commonly used channel modeling approaches for VTV channels: statistical as well as geometry-based channel models have been developed based on measurements and intuitive insights. Extensive references are provided.