Beam management for vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communications in millimeter wave 5G

Abstract Cooperative, Connected and Automated Mobility (CCAM) is expected to leverage the full potential of wireless communications. With the growing adoption of 5G and its support for Vehicle-to-Everything (V2X) communications, beamformed vehicular communications at millimeter-wave (mmWave) bands are expected to enable the most demanding connected driving applications. Beamformed V2X links present the challenge of beam management in such a fast-changing scenario. This paper goes through the practical limitations of the 5G V2X stack to support successful beamforming procedures. Two beam management strategies are proposed. Both strategies are evaluated in terms of power performance, beam recovery time and channel usage. The results suggest that significant differences apply when the beam is more frequently updated, whereas little improvement is seen by increasing the size of the beamset. Also, the selection of a proper strategy is shown to be important to alleviate the channel from overheads, and substantial differences in required signaling can be seen depending on the beam-tracking approach.