V2X-Based Vehicular Positioning: Opportunities, Challenges, and Future Directions

TLDR

Vehicle‑to‑Everything (V2X) offers many wireless communication opportunities, yet its feasibility for vehicular positioning (VP) remains underexplored despite its importance for autonomous driving. The article investigates whether V2X can support VP from multiple perspectives. The authors first highlight V2X’s advantages over GPS, RADAR, LIDAR, and camera, propose new VP scenarios, then review state‑of‑the‑art positioning techniques in standards and identify their limitations. They outline promising research directions for V2X‑based VP that could overcome current obstacles and enable fully autonomous driving.

Abstract

Vehicle-to-Everything (V2X) creates many new opportunities in the area of wireless communications, while its feasibility on enabling vehicular positioning (VP) has not been fully explored despite its importance for autonomous driving. This article aims at investigating whether V2X can help VP from different perspectives. We first explain V2X's critical advantages over other technologies (e.g., GPS, RADAR, LIDAR, and camera) and suggest new scenarios of V2X-based VP. Then, we review the state-of-the-art positioning techniques discussed in different standardizations and point out their limitations. Lastly, some promising research directions for V2X-based VP are presented, which contribute to realizing fully autonomous driving by overcoming the current obstacles.