V2x Connectivity: From Lte To Joint Millimeter Wave Vehicular Communications And Radar Sensing

To meet the prospective demands of intelligent transportation systems (ITS), the Release 14 (Rel-14) and Rel-15 of the Long Term Evolution (LTE) specifications include solutions for enhanced vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communications. While the technical enablers of Rel-14 are suitable for delivering basic safety messages, Rel-15 supports more demanding ITS services with stringent latency and reliability. Starting in Rel-15 and continuing in Rel-16, the 3GPP was developing a novel radio interface for 5G systems, termed the New Radio (NR), which will enable ultra reliable and low latency communications suitable even for the most demanding ITS applications. In this paper, we overview the new V2X-specific features in Rel-15 and Rel-16. Further, we argue that future V2X and automotive radar systems may reuse common equipment, such as millimeter-wave antenna arrays. We finally discuss the vision of joint vehicular communications and radar sensing as well as characterize unified channel access for millimeter-wave vehicular communications and radar sensing.