Feasibility Study of Enabling V2X Communications by LTE-Uu Radio Interface

TL;DR

This paper evaluates the potential of using existing LTE-Uu radio interface to support ultra-reliable low latency communications (URLLC) for vehicular V2X services, focusing on latency and transmission success rates.

Contribution

It introduces an evaluation methodology for LTE-based V2X communication targeting URLLC, including simulation setup and performance analysis for latency and reliability.

Findings

LTE network can meet some URLLC requirements under certain conditions

Simulation results show promising latency and success rates for LTE-V2X

Sensitivity analysis suggests ways to further improve system performance

Abstract

Compared with the legacy wireless networks, the next generation of wireless network targets at different services with divergent QoS requirements, ranging from bandwidth consuming video service to moderate and low date rate machine type services, and supporting as well as strict latency requirements. One emerging new service is to exploit wireless network to improve the efficiency of vehicular traffic and public safety. However, the stringent packet end-to-end (E2E) latency and ultra-low transmission failure rates pose challenging requirements on the legacy networks. In other words, the next generation wireless network needs to support ultra-reliable low latency communications (URLLC) involving new key performance indicators (KPIs) rather than the conventional metric, such as cell throughput in the legacy systems. In this paper, a feasibility study on applying today's LTE network infrastructure and LTE-Uu air interface to provide the URLLC type of services is performed, where the communication takes place between two traffic participants (e.g., vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-pedestrian). To carry out this study, an evaluation methodology of the cellular vehicle-to-anything (V2X) communication is proposed, where packet E2E latency and successful transmission rate are considered as the key performance indicators (KPIs). Then, we describe the simulation assumptions for the evaluation. Based on them, simulation results are depicted that demonstrate the performance of the LTE network in fulfilling new URLLC requirements. Moreover, sensitivity analysis is also conducted regarding how to further improve system performance, in order to enable new emerging URLLC services.