Vehicle-to-Infrastructure Channel Characterization Based on LTE Measurements

Vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) is a fundamental technology for future transportation systems and will enable effective traffic management, as well as multimedia and data services provisioning to passengers. In this work we employ Long Term Evolution signals (employing a time-division duplex mode) to estimate and characterize the channel response in an urban scenario at the University of A Coruña considering a V2I setup with a car equipped with four receive antennas. We study typical channel parameters such as signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and power delay profile together with a diversity gain assessment by means of typical antenna combining methods namely selection combining (SC) equal gain combining (EGC) and maximum ration combining (MRC). In this case although EGC and MRC offer the best theoretical performance at the expense of a higher complexity the presence of line-of-sight conditions and a strong SNR difference between the receive antennas yield favorable conditions for simple schemes such as SC.