Vehicular Ad Hoc Network Interference Mitigation Using Digital Beamforming Approach in Roundabout Scenarios

The Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks paradigm, i.e., VANETs, is a promising technology to enable the Internet of Vehicles for future integration with 5G and 6G infrastructures in smart cities. However, VANETs can be susceptible to wireless interference, such as co-channel interference, which can cause communication quality and performance to deteriorate, threatening vehicular safety applications, including traffic management and accident prevention. Hence, VANET requires practical interference mitigation strategies, such as digital beamforming, to mitigate signals from unwanted directions while improving the reception from desired directions with adequate precision. In this paper, a review of the literature on digital beamforming techniques is carried out. Furthermore, a significant contribution is the development of an experimental platform for a roundabout VANET based on simulations, where different digital beamforming algorithms, such as phase-shift and Minimum-Variance Distortionless-Response, i.e., MVDR, are tested. The proposed simulation platform ensures a fair comparison of the digital beamforming methods by evaluating them under identical conditions. The results show that the phase-shift algorithm leads to improvement due to its dynamics and precise beam control in ad hoc environments, with co-channel interference as the predominant impairment, achieving a reduction of the outage compared to non-beamforming and MVDR beamforming scenarios. Therefore, digital beamforming can improve the performance and reliability of VANETs, offering the potential for advanced wireless network implementations in smart cities with 5G and 6G infrastructures.