Narrowbeam Channel Measurements and Characterization in Vehicle-to-Infrastructure Scenarios for 5G-V2X Communications

Fifth-generation new radio vehicle-to-everything (5G-V2X) communication is an emerging technology to support advanced use cases and higher automation levels in Internet of Vehicles. A comprehensive and accurate knowledge of narrowbeam channels plays a crucial role in the utilization of the 5G-V2X technique. This article focuses on measurement and characterization of vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) narrowbeam channel. A flexible narrowbeam channel measurement system using a phased-array antenna is designed and is employed to perform a series of 3.35-GHz channel measurements with different beam widths in highway primary road and auxiliary road. Based on the collected data, the fading characteristics of V2I narrowbeam channel, including path loss, shadow fading, and
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-factor, are extracted, analyzed, and then modeled. Then, the V2I narrowbeam channel dispersion in time-frequency–space domain is characterized, and the statistical models of root-mean-square (RMS) delay spread, RMS Doppler spread, and RMS angular spread are proposed. In addition, the V2I narrowbeam channel nonstationarity is discussed in terms of the stationarity interval and birth-death process of multipath components, and results of the Markov chain model with parameters like state transition probability matrix and steady-state probability are reported. The results can contribute to the design and evaluation of 5G-V2X technology.