Millimeter-Wave Wireless Communications for IoT-Cloud Supported Autonomous Vehicles: Overview, Design, and Challenges

Autonomous vehicles are a rising technology in the near future to provide a safe and efficient transportation experience. Vehicular communication systems are indispensable components in autonomous vehicles to share road conditions in a wireless manner. With the exponential increase of traffic data, conventional wireless technologies preliminarily show their incompetence because of limited bandwidth. This article explores the capability of millimeter-wave communications for autonomous vehicles. As the next-generation wireless technology, mmWave is advanced in its multi-gigabit transmittability and beamforming technique. Based on these features, we propose the novel design of a vehicular mmWave system combining the advantages of the Internet of Things and cloud computing. This mmWave system supports vehicles sharing multi-gigabit data about the surrounding environment and recognizing objects via the cloud in real time. Therefore, autonomous vehicles are able to determine the optimal driving strategy instantaneously.