Diversity in Direct Mobile-to-Mobile Communication Systems: An Experimental Approach

5G aspires to be the technology that will create, support and enhance automation and industry digitization use cases providing inherent support to device-centric communications, i.e., vehicular (V2X) and Device-to-Device (D2D) communications, tactile internet, as well as Internet-of-Things (IoT) applications. Moreover, 5G deployment options include support of multiple (novel and established) radio access networks (RAN). In this multi-RAN, massive machine-type communication environment, a variety of broadcast, multicast and unicast applications must be simultaneously supported. In this work, we present an implementation of a diversity engine enabled by adaptive, novel, printed ESPAR antennas. The scheme improves system performance in terms of reliability and throughput with increased Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) with simultaneous broadcast and directive support. The scheme was implemented and demonstrated for vehicular use cases in the context of the Horizon 2020 project ROADART.