A Multi-Modal Simulation Framework to Enable Digital Twin-based V2X Communications in Dynamic Environments

TL;DR

This paper introduces a multi-modal simulation framework for creating digital twins of V2X communication environments, enabling realistic sensor data and channel modeling to improve high-frequency vehicular communications in dynamic settings.

Contribution

It presents a novel data-driven workflow and simulation framework combining automotive testing and ray-tracing to generate realistic V2X sensor and wireless channel data.

Findings

Realistic sensor and channel models achieved in urban scenarios.

Framework effectively simulates vehicular blockage and handover scenarios.

Demonstrated potential for improved V2X communication reliability.

Abstract

Digital Twins (DTs) for physical wireless environments have been recently proposed as accurate virtual representations of the propagation environment that can enable multi-layer decisions at the physical communication equipment. At high-frequency bands, DTs can help to overcome the challenges emerging in high mobility conditions featuring vehicular environments. In this paper, we propose a novel data-driven workflow for the creation of the DT of a Vehicle-to-Everything (V2X) communication scenario and a multi-modal simulation framework for the generation of realistic sensor data and accurate mmWave/sub-THz wireless channels. The proposed method leverages an automotive simulation and testing framework and an accurate ray-tracing channel simulator. Simulations over an urban scenario show the achievable realistic sensor and channel modelling both at the infrastructure and at ego-vehicles. We showcase the proposed framework on the DT-aided blockage handover task for V2X link restoration, leveraging the framework's dynamic channel generation capabilities for realistic vehicular blockage simulation.