Sub-6GHz Assisted MAC for Millimeter Wave Vehicular Communications

Abstract

Future connected and automated driving applications can require larger bandwidth and higher data rates than currently supported by sub-6GHz V2X technologies (e.g. DSRC, ITS-G5 or C-V2X). This has triggered the interest in developing mmWave vehicular communications. However, solutions are necessary to solve the challenges resulting from the use of high-frequency bands and the high mobility of vehicles. This paper contributes to this active research area by proposing a sub-6GHz assisted mmWave MAC that decouples the mmWave data and control planes. The proposal offloads mmWave MAC control functions to a sub-6GHz V2X technology. This approach improves the operation of the MAC as the control functions benefit from the longer range, and the broadcast and omnidirectional transmissions of sub-6GHz V2X technologies. This study demonstrates that the proposed sub-6GHz assisted mmWave MAC reduces the control overhead and delay, and increases the spatial sharing compared to mmWave communications using a configuration of IEEE 802.11ad tailored to vehicular networks. The proposed MAC is here evaluated for V2V communications using 802.11p for the control plane and 802.11ad for the data plane, although it can be adapted to other technologies such as C-V2X and 5G NR-V2X. Index Terms-MmWave; MAC; vehicular networks; V2X;V2V; IEEE 802.11p; IEEE 802.11ad; 5G; multi-link; multi-band; multi-RAT I. INTRODUCTIONHEHICULAR networks will support the exchange of information between vehicles (Vehicle to Vehicle, V2V), and between vehicles and other nodes (V2X, Vehicle to Everything). The V2X standards ITS-G5, DSRC and ITS Connect are based on the 802.11p amendment to the IEEE 802.11 standard (amendment 6: Wireless Access in Vehicular Environments), and operate on the 5.9GHz or 760MHz bands. The 3GPP has also developed an adaptation of LTE to support sub-6GHz V2X communications known as C-V2X or LTE-V [1]. Sub-6GHz V2X technologies have been designed to support active safety services that require low data rates broadcast communications.The communication and bandwidth requirements of connected and automated driving applications (Section II.A) can challenge existing sub-6GHz V2X standards with limited bandwidth and data rates. This has motivated studies to design

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