V2V communication performance of conformal plastic-embedded side-mount antennas investigated with field-operational tests

• Published in: 2021 IEEE 93rd Vehicular Technology Conference (VTC2021-Spring) pp. 1 - 5
• Main Authors: Singh, Jasmeet, Altinel, Berk, Bornkessel, Christian, Stephan, Ralf, Hein, Matthias A.
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Published: IEEE 01.04.2021
• Subjects: antenna placement; automated and connected driving; Conferences; intelligent transport systems; Minimization; Patch antennas; Power measurement; Receiving antennas; Roads; V2V; Vehicular and wireless technologies
• ISSN: 2577-2465
• DOI: 10.1109/VTC2021-Spring51267.2021.9448811

Car-to-car communication has wide-ranging applications in the fields of traffic safety and optimization as well as minimization of emissions. For a seamless and reliable communication between the cars and their road environment, as may be evaluated through packet delivery ratio and received power measurements, an appropriate antenna placement is necessary. Accordingly, the field test discussed in this paper compares the performance of three different antenna placements on a test vehicle: 1. Roof-mounted monopole antenna pair contained in a shark fin housing, 2. Patch antenna pair embedded in the front-left B-column, and 3. Combination of two patch antennas with one in the front-left and the other in the front-right B-column. The concurrent use of three V2V modules allowed us to evaluate the performance of the three antenna set-ups simultaneously in a single run through a mixed terrain, allowing for straightforward performance comparisons. The power received by the roof-top monopole antennas was, on average, 8 dBm higher than the front-left/right B-column patch antenna combination and 13 dBm higher than the front-left B-column patch antenna pair. The reasons for these and other differences are appropriately addressed in the paper. While the roof-top monopole antenna combination performed overall better, we argue that using an appropriate amplifier could raise the performance of the B-column antennas to the same or even higher levels.