Experimental Demonstration of MmWave Vehicle-to-Vehicle Communications Using IEEE 802.11ad

Millimeter wave (mmWave) vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communications has received significant attention as one of the key applications in 5G technology, which is called as Giga-V2V (GiV2V). The ultra-wide band of the GiV2V allows vehicles to transfer gigabit data within a few seconds, which can achieve platooning of autonomous vehicles. The platooning process requires the rich data of a 4K dash-camera and LiDAR sensors for accurate vehicle control. To achieve this, 3GPP, a global organization of standards that provides specifications for the 5G mobile technology, is developing a new standard for GiV2V technology by extending the existing specification for device-to-device (D2D) communication. Meanwhile, in the last decade, the mmWave spectrum has been used in the wireless local area network (WLAN) for indoor devices, such as home appliances, based on the IEEE 802.11ad (also known as Wireless Gigabit Alliance (WiGig)) technology, which supports gigabit wireless connectivity of approximately 10 m distance in the 60-GHz frequency spectrum. The WiGig technology has been commercialized and used for various applications ranging from Internet access points to set-top boxes for televisions. In this study, we investigated the applicability of the WiGig technology to the GiV2V communications through experiments on a real vehicular testbed. To achieve this, we built a testbed using commercial off-the-shelf WiGig devices and performed experiments to measure inter-vehicle connectivity on a campus and on city roads with different permitted vehicle speeds. The experimental results demonstrate that disconnections occurred frequently due to the short radio range and the connectivity varied with the vehicle speed. However, the instantaneous throughput was sufficient to exchange large data between moving vehicles in different road environments.