Millimeter Wave V2X Communications: Use Cases and Design Considerations of Beam Management

Sharing perception sensor information (e.g., camera, radar, and LIDAR) among vehicles in proximity using vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communications provides non-line-of-sight (NLOS) information about the surrounding environment, improving the safety and traffic efficiency of cooperative automated driving. However, such application requires high data rates on the order of 10s to 100s of Mbps (or 1 Gbps), which cannot be supported by the existing V2X communication technologies such as IEEE 802.11p-based dedicated short-range communication (DSRC) in 5.9 GHz band. Millimeter wave (mmWave) communication has the potential to meet the high data rate demand thanks to its wide bandwidth. In this paper, we introduce potential use cases of mmWave V2X communications. Also, we discuss technical challenges and design considerations for mmWave V2X beam management. Particularly, we elaborate on how we can utilize low-frequency communication (e.g., 5.9 GHz DSRC), onboard sensors mounted at vehicles and infrastructures, and DSRC messages (e.g., vehicle position, speed, acceleration, and path prediction) to facilitate mmWave V2X beam management.