System-Level Simulation Investigation And Performance Evaluation In Communication And Sensing Integrated Wireless Vehicular Networks

To meet the high-performance requirements of emerging applications in wireless vehicular networks,such as autonomous driving and vehicle platooning,there has been a growing interest in integrating wireless communication and wireless sensing through physical layer fusion design.This approach aims to achieve the functionalities of both wireless communication and sensing by sharing wireless resources.System level simulation evaluation of communication and sensing integrated wireless vehicular network performanceis crucial for guiding key technology design and practical deployment,and has become a focal point of industry and academia.Existing system-level simulation based on 3GPP standards focus basic wireless communication functionality for vehicular networks,but not considering the simulation evaluation of wireless sensing performance.In this study,we study a system-level simulation technology for communication and sensing integrated in wireless vehicular networks.We design and build corresponding simulation platforms.We conduct simulation evaluations and analysis of both downlink system capacity and sensing speed/distance accuracy,while investigating the impact of different subcarrier spacing and wireless environments on the performance of communication-sensing networks.The main contributions and innovations of this work include:Addressing the issue of traditional system-level simulation platforms for wireless vehicular networks unable to simulatewireless sensing capabilities,we design and build a communication and sensing integrated system-level simulation platform based on the 5G communication NR frame structure.This platform incorporates a timefrequency domain orthogonal communication and sensing integrated method,achieving an integrated frame structure for communicationsensing signals in the time-frequency domain.It also includes frequencydomain orthogonal sensing signal processing methods and functional modules necessary for the basic operation of the simulation platform,such as wireless vehicular network deployment models,propagation models,and antenna models.To investigate the constraint relationshipbetween communication and sensing performance in wireless vehicular networks,we conduct simulation evaluations of communication-sensing networks under different configurations of sensing resource allocation and subcarrier spacing using the built system-level simulation platform.The simulation results demonstrate that,at the 5.9 GHz frequency band,with a 100 MHz bandwidth and a communication-sensing cycle of 100 ms,configuring 10-20 time slots in the time domain and 1024-2048 subcarriers in the frequency domain for wireless sensing,with a subcarrier spacing of 15 kHz or 30 kHz,can achieve a optimizedin the trade-of performance of the communication-sensing network.To further enhance the performance of communication and sensing integrated in wireless vehicular networks,we propose an Affinity Propagation(AP)-based user clustering algorithm assisted by sensing information.This algorithm takes advantage of the distinctive characteristics of wireless links between vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicleto-base station connections.It selects high-quality wireless links between cluster heads and base stations,as well as between cluster heads and cluster nodes,to relay communication data.The simulation results demonstrate that the AP-based clustering algorithm assisted by sensing information effectively enhances the downlink communication capacity of wireless vehicular networks,achieving performance improvements of 20.15%,6.68%,and 4.09%compared to non-clustered users and the two control algorithms,respectively,demonstrating its practical value.This study designs and builds a system-level simulation platform for evaluating the performance of communication and sensing integrated in wireless vehicular networks.We conduct simulation studies and propose performance enhancement strategies,providing valuable insights for the evolution and development of related technologies.