Physics‐based wave propagation model assisted vehicle localisation in tunnels

Abstract

Connected and autonomous vehicles systems can provide a safe and convenient transportation solution through wireless communication between vehicles and roadside communication infrastructure. The vehicle's ability to establish its location plays an important role in such systems. This article presents an efficient localisation framework by combining physics‐based wireless propagation models and fingerprint localisation algorithms. To that end, a parabolic wave equation (PWE)‐based wireless channel simulator is utilised to obtain the direction of arrival (DOA) values that construct the fingerprint dataset. A detailed procedure on how to obtain the DOA information using PWE, as well as analysis and guidelines on the selection of the key parameters of the localisation framework are provided. Numerical results are compared with theoretical data in terms of accuracy, and the selection of parameters during the localisation process is investigated in actual road tunnel cases. Besides, various numbers of wireless access points and schemes of fingerprinting algorithms have been studied, showing the capability of the proposed approach to be employed for the pre‐design of wireless communication systems.