Image-based modeling and simulating physical channel for vehicle-to-vehicle communications

Vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communication systems have received ever-increasing attention since IEEE 802.11p is proposed and approved. The scenarios in V2V communication are quite different from that in traditional wireless communications, e.g. short-lived link holding time, high-speed motion of transmitters and receivers, and low height of antennas. Due to these significant differences, V2V wireless channels are characterized by distinctive spatial as well as temporal impulse responses. From perspective of geometrical optics theory, the paper proposes to comprehensively model V2V physical channel and integrate the proposed models with CarSim and Simulink in order to obtain necessary scenario parameters in real time. A series of traffic and environmental models, including vehicle, road, building, tree, and weather are presented in this paper. Moreover, image method is used to determine potential wave propagation paths consisting of line-of-sight, reflections, diffractions, scatterings and their combinations. Furthermore, typical and prime channel characteristics such as impulse response and average received power are analyzed theoretically, which drive the subsequent V2V communication simulations under various combinations of traffic situation and network scenario.