LTE evolution for vehicle-to-everything services

TLDR

Wireless communication is essential for the competitiveness of next‑generation vehicles, prompting 3GPP to standardize LTE‑based V2X services that connect vehicles, pedestrians, and infrastructure. The 3GPP effort aims to extend LTE so vehicles can exchange safety, traffic‑control, and notification messages with other vehicles, pedestrians, and infrastructure. LTE systems, enhanced for spectral efficiency, cost‑effective deployment, and multi‑type support, provide the service flow, requirements, and solutions to address high‑mobility and dense‑traffic challenges in V2X scenarios.

Abstract

Wireless communication has become a key technology for competitiveness of next generation vehicles. Recently, the 3GPP has initiated standardization activities for LTE-based V2X services composed of vehicle-to-vehicle, vehicle- to-pedestrian, and vehicle-to-infrastructure/network. The goal of these 3GPP activities is to enhance LTE systems to enable vehicles to communicate with other vehicles, pedestrians, and infrastructure in order to exchange messages for aiding in road safety, controlling traffic flow, and providing various traffic notifications. In this article, we provide an overview of the service flow and requirements of the V2X services LTE systems are targeting. This article also discusses the scenarios suitable for operating LTE-based V2X services, and addresses the main challenges of high mobility and densely populated vehicle environments in designing technical solutions to fulfill the requirements of V2X services. Leveraging the spectral-efficient air interface, the cost-effective network deployment, and the versatile nature of supporting different communication types, LTE systems along with proper enhancements can be the key enabler of V2X services.