A top-down approach for building realistic reference scenarios and simulation framework for LTE C-V2X communications

Abstract

Many vehicle-to-everything (V2X) applications and use cases require their feasibility to be simulated, tested, and validated in realistic traffic scenarios and under various network conditions before real-time testbed implementation. As cellular-V2X (C-V2X) becomes a superior technology for future connected and autonomous vehicles, the need for a simulation framework, which integrates traffic and network simulators with a realistic channel model, becomes more evident. The challenge is to overcome existing simulation platforms' weaknesses and improve simulation results' accuracy while preserving flexibility with manageable implementation complexity. This paper proposed a top-down approach for building reference scenarios with macroscopic and microscopic layers, which interweaves traffic, network, and channel simulators. The basis for the proposed simulation framework is realistic scenario data, which provides the input to the road traffic simulator and the radio channel simulator. The core of the whole simulator is the network simulator interacting with the two other simulators via dedicated interfaces. The road traffic simulator generates the vehicles' positions and is forwarded to the network simulator, which requests the radio channel simulator for the path loss values on the transmitter-receiver (TX-RX) link. As a proof of concept, the simulation results focused on the load and interference analysis in the absence and presence of V2X traffic.