Measurements and analysis of vehicular radio channels in the inland lake bridge area

Vehicular communication plays a vital role in intelligent transportation systems and smart cities. The huge data transmission and high mobility require a high-speed and stable wireless channel as a basis. This study presents a 5.9 GHz vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) measurement, covering a complete inland lake bridge communication environment. Analysis of the channel characteristics is carried out according to three main propagation scenarios: ramp merging, a rear vehicle overtaking the front vehicle, and an urban scenario. Channel characteristics including the power delay profile, Doppler spectral density, amplitude distribution, and fading depth (FD) is extracted and analysed. An FD of ∼2.5 dB is determined in V2V communication. Furthermore, it is observed that, in addition to the impact from the ramp structure, metallic traffic signs, road lights, pedestrian bridges, and large trucks can also make significant contributions to vehicular communication. Moreover, a triple Gaussian mixture distribution is proposed to model the channel characterisation. The results demonstrate that the specific structure of the ramp will influence the channel performance more significantly than the general traffic road structure, which can provide a meaningful reference for the future research of V2V radio channels and is useful for the design and layout of vehicular communication systems.