Empirical Radio Channel Characterization at 5.9 GHz for Vehicle-to-Infrastructure Communication

The uses of a vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) communications in the mining industry are expected to open significant opportunities for collecting and exchanging data. However, besides enabling the service of these technologies, radio channel propagation should be investigated. In this paper, we present extensive channel measurement and characterization at the 5.9 GHz dedicated short-range communications (DSRC) frequency band. The measurements were performed in a real underground mine gallery. The primary purpose of this study is to characterize the large-scale and small-scale fading. We provide results for the root-mean-square (RMS) delay spread and Kurtosis of the received power for both stationary and moving car scenarios. We conclude the paper by identifying the under-researched aspects of the vehicular propagation and channel modeling in underground mines.