Optimizations for Hardware-in-the-Loop-Based V2X Validation Platforms

• Published in: 2021 IEEE 93rd Vehicular Technology Conference (VTC2021-Spring) pp. 1 - 7
• Main Authors: Mafakheri, Babak, Gonnella, Pierpaolo, Bazzi, Alessandro, Masini, Barbara Mavi, Caggiano, Michele, Verdone, Roberto
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Published: IEEE 01.04.2021
• Subjects: Cellular-V2X; Computational modeling; Conferences; Connected and automated vehicles; Delays; Hardware-in-the-loop; Hardware-in-the-loop simulation; IEEE 802.11p; Industries; Limiting; Real-time simulation; Real-time systems
• ISSN: 2577-2465
• DOI: 10.1109/VTC2021-Spring51267.2021.9448667

Connectivity and automation are increasingly getting importance in the automotive industry, which is observing a radical change from vehicles driven by humans to fully automated and remotely controlled ones. The test and validation of all the related devices and applications is thus becoming a crucial aspect; this is raising the interest on hardware-in-the-loop (HiL) platforms which reduce the need for complicated field trials, thus limiting the costs and delay added to the process. With reference to the test and validation of vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communications aspects, and assuming either sidelink LTE/5G-V2X or IEEE 802.11p/bd technologies, in this work we focus on the real-time HiL simulation of the information exchanged by one vehicle under test and the surrounding, simulated, objects. Such exchange must be reproduced in a time-efficient manner, with elaborations done fast enough to allow testing the applications in real-time. More precisely, we discuss the simulation of non-ideal positioning and channel propagation taking into account current impairments. We also provide details on optimization solutions that allowed us to trade-off minor loss in accuracy with a significant reduction of the computation time burden, reaching up to more than one order of magnitude speed increase in our experiments.