Fully software OFDM modulation in vehicular, highly time-variant channels. An implemented technology and its results

Abstract

Transferring large amounts of information to fast moving vehicles on the highway has always been difficult task for any employed wireless transmission system, due to channel's heavy double time / frequency selectivity. Still, the possibility to make such delivery both possible and cost-efficient remains highly interesting for applications including, but not limited to, traffic data delivery, broadcasting of passenger-aimed informational video content. Currently, in-car information / entertainment systems suffer from a heavy limitation: they can only be fed by GPS navigation data (i.e. no realtime traffic status information) and by local multimedia content stored within the car (i.e. no live multimedia broadcasting). In this paper we present an implemented and tested Software Defined Radio technology which we developed bottom up from scratch, aimed at video and data distribution over low coherence time, Doppler effect affected, frequency selective, vehicular highway channels. On-field testing outcomes obtained using such technology are also presented in detail pointing out achieved results in terms of reliable wideband communication as well as still open research and development lanes.