Enhanced Resource Scheduling for Platooning in 5G V2X Systems

Vehicular platooning with short inter-vehicular distances promises to achieve better road traffic efficiency and high fuel savings. Manoeuvring and maintaining such Platoons is very challenging and requires mutual awareness and coordination between the vehicles through a highly reliable and low latency communication mechanism. Thus, cellular vehicle-to-vehicle communication is a key enabler of High Density Platooning. However, detrimental effects of cell borders have up to now not been sufficiently considered. This paper addresses 3GPP V2X radio and mobility management of Platoons in a multi-cell system. The challenges related to Sidelink resource scheduling for Platooning are studied in a realistic multi-cell V2X deployment. Our comprehensive system simulations show that current LTE mobility and resource management, where Platoon Members are scheduled individually, cannot support the required performance. To address the identified challenges, a group scheduling mechanism is proposed, which involves the Platoon Leader taking charge of the whole Platoon. The Sidelink resources required for the whole Platoon is granted by the network to the Platoon Leader while entering a cell, which distributes the scheduling information to other Platoon Members. The proposed solution considerably outperforms the baseline LTE system and largely overcomes the cell border issues. These improvements and further enhancements are candidate features for 3GPP NR-V2X in Rel. 16 and Rel. 17.