Analysis of ITS-G5A V2X communications performance in autonomous cooperative driving experiments

Abstract

In this paper the performance of ITS-G5A communications for an autonomous driving application is analyzed in a real high-density scenario. The data was collected during the cooperative platooning tests that took place in Helmond in the frame of the Grand Cooperative Driving Challenge 2016. In the competition, between 8–10 autonomous vehicles formed two platoons in different lanes and were required to merge into a predefined competition zone. The performance is characterized using CAM CCDFs which serves as a base for the evaluation of a Cooperative Adaptive Cruise Control application. Two important effects has been identified that affect to the reliability of the communications. Firstly, there is a degradation with the distance that appears to be stronger for cars and more gentle for trucks. This indicates that occlusions heavily affect the connectivity of ITS-G5A. Secondly, the reliability is below expectations and some of the vehicles perform consistently worse than others. Although further investigation is required, a possible explanation for this is that a highly congested channel is making some of the vehicles get stuck and are not able to regularly access the channel.