Effect of Surface Attenuation on Signal Propagation Analysis in Connected Autonomous Vehicle Communication

The advent of the autonomous vehicle has modified the landscape of modern transportation in the world. More sophisticated transportation requirement is emerging, notably in communication between vehicles to infrastructure. Robust and reliable communication infrastructure has become a crucial part of transportation criteria. The need for such a high quality of service communication drives for excellent preparation and planning in the communication process. As such, this research focuses on coming out with models to be used for advanced planning of communication processes between vehicles to infrastructure which is defined mainly by ground surfaces and objects around the roadways in Malaysia. Channel measurement around the testbed in Universiti Malaysia Perlis resulted in several interesting results that would shape the planning of CAV communication. It is observed that communication close to the ground requires high power consumption as the range is significantly reduced. It is also learned that certain ground surfaces allow for a different level of signal attenuation depending on the antenna heights. The research also found out that the attenuation profile follows strictly the log-normal distribution and as such certain planning could be made to reshape the communication process to cater to this.