sensors
Article
Connected Vehicles: V2V and V2I Road Weather and Traffic
Communication Using Cellular Technologies
Muhammad Naeem Tahir 1, *, Pekka Leviäkangas 1 and Marcos Katz 2
1 Infrastructure & Transport, Faculty of Technology, University of Oulu, FI-90014 Oulu, Finland;
[email protected]
2 Centre for Wireless Communications (CWC)-Networks and Systems, University of Oulu,
FI-90014 Oulu, Finland; [email protected]
* Correspondence: [email protected]
Abstract: There is a continuous need to design and develop wireless technologies to meet the in-
creasing demands for high-speed wireless data transfer to incorporate advanced intelligent transport
systems. Different wireless technologies are continuously evolving including short-range and long-
range (WiMAX, LTE, and 5G) cellular standards. These emerging technologies can considerably
enhance the operational performance of communication between vehicles and road-side infrastruc-
ture. This paper analyzes the performance of cellular-based long-term evolution (LTE) and 5GTN
(5G Test Network) in pilot field measurements (i.e., vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure)
when delivering road weather and traffic information in real-time environments. Measurements were
conducted on a test track operated and owned by the Finnish Meteorological Institute (FMI), Finland.
The results showed that 5GTN outperformed LTE when exchanging road weather and traffic data
messages in V2V and V2I scenarios. This comparison was made by mainly considering bandwidth,
throughput, packet loss, and latency. The safety critical messages were transmitted at a transmission
frequency of 10 Hz. The performance of both compared technologies (i.e., LTE and 5GTN) fulfilled
the minimum requirements of the ITS-Assisted Road weather and traffic platform to offer reliable
Citation: Tahir, M.N.; Leviäkangas, P.;
communication for enhanced road traffic safety. The field measurement results also illustrate the
Katz, M. Connected Vehicles: V2V advantage of cellular networks (LTE and 5GTN) with a clear potential to use it heterogeneously in
and V2I Road Weather and Traffic future field tests with short-range protocols, e.g., IEEE 802.11p.
Communication Using Cellular
Technologies. Sensors 2022, 22, 1142. Keywords: C-ITS; LTE; 5GTN; ITS; V2V; V2I; V2X
https://doi.org/10.3390/s22031142
Academic Editor: Omprakash
Kaiwartya
1. Introduction
Received: 10 December 2021
The term intelligent transport system (ITS) is used to demonstrate the design and
Accepted: 26 January 2022
deployment of information and communication technologies (ICT) in the domain of trans-
Published: 2 February 2022
portation. ITS offers numerous solutions for road transport by exploiting road weather
Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral and traffic data with different communications technologies. Basically, ITS is deployed
with regard to jurisdictional claims in to improve road traffic safety as well as improve traffic efficiency and reduce ecological
published maps and institutional affil- impact [1].
iations. A cooperative communication system is one of the key technologies in the framework
of ITS. The term “cooperative” signals the collaboration between vehicles and transport
infrastructure by using wireless networks. Normally, there are four types of communi-
cation in a cooperative intelligent transport system (C-ITS), namely, vehicle-to-vehicle
Copyright: © 2022 by the authors.
(V2V), vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I), vehicle-to-pedestrian (V2P), and vehicle-to-network
Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.
(V2N) [2].
This article is an open access article
distributed under the terms and 1. V2V Communication: V2V is the direct communication between vehicles’ user equip-
conditions of the Creative Commons ment (UE);
Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// 2. V2I Communication: V2I is the communication between vehicles and road-side
creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ infrastructure, i.e., road-side units (RSUs) providing connectivity support to transport
4.0/). infrastructure UE;
Sensors 2022, 22, 1142. https://doi.org/10.3390/s22031142 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/sensors
