Is It Worth to Use Feedback Channel in 5G V2X Platoon Scenarios?

TL;DR

This paper evaluates whether incorporating a feedback channel in 5G V2X platoon scenarios improves data transmission reliability and system capacity, revealing that its effectiveness varies based on traffic and platoon parameters.

Contribution

The study provides a comprehensive simulation analysis of feedback channel impact in 5G V2X platooning, highlighting conditions where it enhances or reduces system capacity.

Findings

Feedback can double system capacity in some scenarios.

Feedback usage may halve capacity depending on traffic conditions.

Adaptive feedback parameter selection is crucial for optimal performance.

Abstract

5G Vehicle-to-Everything (V2X) is a new technology developed by 3GPP to support inter-vehicle communication. In contrast to 4G V2X which allows only broadcast communication, 5G V2X enables groupcast and unicast communication. Such types of communication are needed for new V2X scenarios: platooning, extended sensors, remote driving, etc. To improve the data transmission reliability and assist in the selection of the transmission parameters in these scenarios, 5G V2X introduces a feedback channel that allows receivers to send acknowledgments in response to data packets. However, some part of the overall resource shall be allocated for the feedback channel, which reduces the amount of channel resources available for data transmission. In this paper, we consider a scenario with a platoon, which generates groupcast traffic, and surrounding vehicles, which generate legacy broadcast traffic. Using extensive simulations in NS-3, we analyze how the usage of the feedback channel influences the overall system capacity. Our results show that depending on the platoon size, groupcast, and broadcast traffic intensities, and their quality of service requirements, the usage of the feedback channel can in some cases significantly increase the system capacity (up to 2x), while in other cases it almost halves the system capacity. We explain the reasons for such effects and discuss how to adaptively select the feedback channel parameters.