On the performance of IEEE 802.11p and LTE-V2V for the cooperative awareness of connected vehicles

To improve safety on the roads, next-generation vehicles will be equipped with short-range communication technologies. Many applications enabled by such communication will be based on a continuous broadcast of information about the own status from each vehicle to the neighborhood, often referred as cooperative awareness or beaconing. Although the only standardized technology allowing direct vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communication has been IEEE 802.11p until now, the latest release of long-term evolution (LTE) included advanced device-to-device features designed for the vehicular environment (LTE-V2V) making it a suitable alternative to IEEE 802.11p. Advantages and drawbacks are being considered for both technologies, and which one will be implemented is still under debate. The aim of this paper is thus to provide an insight into the performance of both technologies for cooperative awareness and to compare them. The investigation is performed analytically through the implementation of novel models for both IEEE 802.11p and LTE-V2V able to address the same scenario, with consistent settings and focusing on the same output metrics. The proposed models take into account several aspects that are often neglected by related works, such as hidden terminals and capture effect in IEEE 802.11p, the impact of imperfect knowledge of vehicles position on the resource allocation in LTE-V2V, and the various modulation and coding scheme combinations that are available in both technologies. Results show that LTE-V2V allows us to maintain the required quality of service at even double or more the distance than IEEE 802.11p in moderate traffic conditions. However, due to the half-duplex nature of devices and the structure of LTE frames, it shows lower capacity than IEEE 802.11p if short distances and very high vehicle density are targeted.