A Measurement Based Shadow Fading Model for Vehicle-to-Vehicle Network Simulations

TL;DR

This paper introduces a shadow fading model for V2V communication based on real urban and highway measurements, highlighting the impact of vehicle obstructions on signal attenuation and improving simulation accuracy.

Contribution

It presents a novel shadow fading model incorporating vehicle obstructions for V2V channel simulations, based on real measurement data and applicable to existing VANET simulators.

Findings

Vehicles cause about 10 dB additional attenuation when obstructing LOS.

The LOS/OLOS model significantly differs from Nakagami-m based models in system simulations.

The model improves the realism of V2V communication simulations.

Abstract

The vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) propagation channel has significant implications on the design and performance of novel communication protocols for vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs). Extensive research efforts have been made to develop V2V channel models to be implemented in advanced VANET system simulators for performance evaluation. The impact of shadowing caused by other vehicles has, however, largely been neglected in most of the models, as well as in the system simulations. In this paper we present a shadow fading model targeting system simulations based on real measurements performed in urban and highway scenarios. The measurement data is separated into three categories, line-of-sight (LOS), obstructed line-of-sight (OLOS) by vehicles, and non line-of-sight due to buildings, with the help of video information recorded during the measurements. It is observed that vehicles obstructing the LOS induce an additional average attenuation of about 10 dB in the received signal power. An approach to incorporate the LOS/OLOS model into existing VANET simulators is also provided. Finally, system level VANET simulation results are presented, showing the difference between the LOS/OLOS model and a channel model based on Nakagami-m fading.