Continuous multi-access communication for high-resolution low-latency V2X sensor streaming

Future automated mobility is expected to rely on Cooperative Perception (CP) applications to achieve high degrees of reliable autonomy. CP applications are characterized by the exchange of large sensor data objects, such as camera frames or LIDAR point clouds. The high mobility of nodes in combination with the safety-critical nature of CP data, demands architectures enabling continuous connectivity for reliable transmission of large data objects. This work presents a user-centric architecture combining a cell-free Radio-Access-Network (RAN) with a centralized backbone management. By monitoring multiple available connections through an ultra-lightweight heartbeat-based protocol, the handover procedure can be reduced to a low-latency backbone reconfiguration. Thus, the need for redundant data transmission to achieve loss-free and continuous data transmissions during handover is avoided.