Geometry-Cluster-Based Stochastic MIMO Model for Vehicle-to-Vehicle Communications in Street Canyon Scenarios

Vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) wireless communications have many envisioned applications for ensuring traffic safety and for addressing traffic congestion. However, developing suitable communication systems and standards for this purpose requires developers to have accurate models for the V2V propagation channel. Likewise, the dynamic evolution of multipath components (MPCs) in V2V channels has not been well modeled in existing models. In this paper, we propose a geometry-based stochastic channel model for a lightly built-up urban environment and then parametrize the model from measurements. The MPCs are extracted based on a high-resolution parameter estimation; they are tracked and clustered through a joint algorithm. The identified clusters are classified as line-of-sight, reflections from static scatterers, reflections from mobile scatterers, multiple-bounce reflections, and diffuse scattering. Specifically, the multiple-bounce reflections are modeled as twin clusters that follow the COST 273/COST2100 approach. The paper gives a full parameterization of the channel model and supplies a step-by-step implementation recipe. We verify the model by comparing two second-order statistics, i.e., the root-mean-square (RMS) delay spread and the angular spreads of arrival/departure derived from the channel model, to the results obtained directly from the measurements. Furthermore, we also identify several key factors that strongly impact the synthetic channel performance.