Sensor-Aided V2X Beam Tracking for Connected Automated Driving: Distributed Architecture and Processing Algorithms

This paper focuses on ultra-reliable low-latency Vehicle-to-Anything (V2X) communications able to meet the extreme requirements of high Levels of Automation (LoA) use cases. We introduce a system architecture and processing algorithms for the alignment of highly collimated V2X beams based either on millimeter-Wave (mmW) or Free-Space Optics (FSO). Beam-based V2X communications mainly suffer from blockage and pointing misalignment issues. This work focuses on the latter case, which is addressed by proposing a V2X architecture that enables a sensor-aided beam-tracking strategy to counteract the detrimental effect of vibrations and tilting dynamics. A parallel low-rate, low-latency, and reliable control link, in fact, is used to exchange data on vehicle kinematics (i.e., position and orientation) that assists the beam-pointing along the line-of-sight between V2X transceivers (i.e., the dominant multipath component for mmW, or the direct link for FSO). This link can be based on sub-6 GHz V2X communication, as in 5G frequency range 1 (FR1). Performance assessments are carried out to validate the robustness of the proposed methodology in coping with misalignment induced by vehicle dynamics. Numerical results show that highly directional mmW and/or FSO communications are promising candidates for massive data-rate vehicular communications even in high mobility scenarios.