An Experimental Study of Channel Characterization Based on Measurements of non-perpendicular intersections scenarios at 5.9 GHz for Vehicle-to-Vehicle Communications

The IEEE 802.11p, which operates at 5.9 GHz, is a standard used for vehicle communications. This thesis presents new measurements of the propagation channel by using new devices such as LocoMate mini2 to measure network performance, signal strength and Doppler propagation conducted for five different non-perpendicular intersections in Leicester, UK.

The study found that the received power and network performance were lower at intersections with fewer buildings. The high signal strength positively correlated to the presence of buildings via multipath propagation. The signal strength measurements were compared with predictions of the path loss model (virtualsource11p) and an average error was found below 5 dB for measurements in these intersections. The model fits well with most measurements but minor modifications to the model are proposed to increase accuracy.

The relationship between car size and Doppler spread is another observation of this study. It is shown that there is a larger Doppler spread when the size of this car is larger. The placement of the antennas also influences the performance. Measurements were taken with different configurations of the transmitter antenna. Results show that changing the height of the transmitter has a strong effect on the received signal within the LOS region, but little effect at greater distances. The addition of an antenna ground plane has a similar effect to changing the height.

Finally, GEMV2-based simulations were performed to show the effects of vehicle and building numbers on the path loss of the V2V communication channel. The results showed that the density of vehicles causes a decrease in the received power when there are few buildings near the road. On the other hand, in intersections with more buildings, the buildings have more effect on the signal attenuation than the number of vehicles.