Automation in the mining industry has the potential to increase safety and productivity while improving working conditions. Ore transportation within the mine is a repetitive task which is well suited to be replaced by an autonomous mining vehicle operating around the clock. Scania, a world leader in sustainable transport solutions is investigating this new concept of vehicle. The autonomous operation is enabled by several technologies installed on the vehicle, including a communication system object of this thesis. Connectivity among vehicles is required in order to coordinate paths and exchange mission critical information. In this thesis, after identifying the challenges of wireless propagations in mines, the communication technology is chosen and possible antenna configurations and communication ranges are found. Through numerical link-budget simulations and subsequent range measurements, the potential communication range of this vehicle has been quantified. The results show the effectiveness of height diversity in extending the communication range. Lastly, the performance degradation caused by dust accumulated on the antennas is discussed. / Automatiseringen i gruvindustrin har potentialen att öka säkerheten och produktiviteten samtidigt som den förbättrar arbetsvillkoren. Malmtransporten inne i gruvan är en repetitiv uppgift som passar bra att bli utbytt av en autonom gruvtransport som är i drift dygnet runt. Scania, en av de världsledande inom hållbara tranportlösningar, undersöker just nu denna typ av fordon. Den självstyrande driften aktiveras genom att ett flertal teknologier installeras på fordonet, inklusive ett kommunikationssystem som är ämne för denna avhandling. Anslutningen mellan fordonen är nödvändig för att kunna samordna banor och ge information i för uppdraget kritiska lägen. I denna avhandling, efter att ha identifierat svårigheterna med en trådlös utbredning i gruvor, är kommunikationsteknologin vald och möjliga antennkonfigurationer och kommunikationsräckvidder funna. Genom numeriska länkbudgetsimuleringar och efterföljande räckviddsmätningar, har det potentiella kommunikationsområdet för detta fordon kvantifierats. Resultaten visar effektiviteten av mångfald när det gäller höjd när man utvidgar kommunikationsområdet. Slutligen diskuteras prestandaförsämringen orsakad av damm som ackumulerats på antennerna.

Cette thèse analyse la possibilité d'utiliser des communications sans fil inter-véhiculaires pour améliorer la sécurité routière. Les performances du nouveau réseau ainsi créé (réseau ad-hoc véhiculaire) sont étudiées analytiquement et par des simulations dans un environnement réaliste. La thèse se concentre surtout sur des scénarios avec une forte densité de véhicules. Dans ce cas, l'accès au support devient un problème essentiel, en principal pour les applications de sécurité routière qui nécessitent une qualité de service élevée pour fonctionner dans un tel contexte. Ce travail montre que la version actuelle du standard IEEE 802.11, proposé comme méthode d'accès dans les réseaux véhiculaires, ne peut pas résoudre ce problème de passage à l'échelle pour supporter correctement les applications de sécurité routière. Plusieurs améliorations possibles sont analysées, liées à l'utilisation optimale de certains paramètres du protocole comme la taille de la fenêtre de contention ou bien le seuil de détection de la porteuse. Des nouveaux mécanismes adaptatifs visant ces paramètres sont proposés et les améliorations ainsi obtenues sont non-négligeables. Finalement, une nouvelle méthode d'accès est définie, en tenant compte des caractéristiques des applications de sécurité routière. Toujours basée sur des techniques CSMA, cette technique donne des résultats largement supérieurs à la version standard actuelle. / The equipment of vehicles with wireless communication devices in order to improve road safety is a major component of a future intelligent transportation system. The success and availability of IEEE 802.11-based products make this technology the main competitor for the Medium Access Control (MAC) layer used in vehicle-to-vehicle communication. The IEEE 802.11p amendment has been specially designed in this special context of wireless access in vehicular environments. However, as all the other approaches based on Carrier Sense Multiple Access (CSMA), this protocol presents scalability problems, which leads to poor performance in high density scenarios, quite frequent in the case of a vehicular ad hoc network (VANET). This thesis studies the congestion control problem in the context of safety vehicular communications, with a special focus on the back-off mechanism and the carrier sense function. First of all, a number of important characteristics presented by the safety messages are discovered and understood by the means of an analytical framework. Second, the lessons learned from the analytical study are put into practice with the design of two adaptive mechanisms (one for the contention window and the other one for the carrier sense threshold) that take into account the local vehicular density. These mechanisms remain simple, but highly efficient, while also being straightforward to integrate in IEEE 802.11 devices. Finally, by taking into account the most important properties of a safety VANET, a new CSMA-based MAC protocol is proposed. This new access method, named Safety Range CSMA (SR-CSMA), relies on the idea that collisions can not be avoided in a high density network. However, by increasing the number of simultaneous transmissions between geographically distant nodes, SR-CSMA manages to better protect the immediate neighborhood, the most important area for safety applications.

In this research oriented master’s thesis we have proposed a future vision of ITS (Intelligent Transport Systems) by utilizing the novel concept of HWA (Heterogeneous Wireless Access). Our proposal is backed by the investigation of the results of experiments conducted at CERES (Centre for Research on Embedded Systems), Halmstad University, Sweden to evaluate the quality of communication for V2V and V2I by using the IEEE 802.11p standard. We have also identified the expected scenarios with need of any other communication technology in replacement of IEEE 802.11p for V2V and V2I communication. We have also investigated the relevant research projects, experiments and their results on the basis of predefined constraints. In the investigated research projects the concept of HWA has been correlated with our proposal of HWA for ITS. We have identified that for smooth integration of any communication technology with IEEE 802.11p, an efficient and smart vertical handover protocol or method will be required. We have presented a blue print of a custom designed vertical handover technique which can be implemented for future ITS with further enhancements and experimental evaluations. We have also evaluated the worst case scenarios to assess the suitability of the HWA for the ITS. We proposed few solutions based on the evaluation of communication scenarios for the integration of IEEE 802.11p with other wireless communication technologies. Finally we have provided some conclusions and suggested future researches which must be conducted to realize the dream of ITS with support of HWA.

<p>The number of vehicles has increased significantly in recent years, which causeshigh density in traffic and further problems like accidents and road congestions.A solution regarding to this problem is vehicle-to-vehicle communication, wherevehicles are able to communicate with their neighboring vehicles even in the absenceof a central base station, to provide safer and more efficient roads and toincrease passenger safety.The goal of this thesis is to investigate basic physical layer parameters of ainter-vehicle communication system, like emission power, spectral emission, errorvector magnitude, guard interval, ramp-up/down time, and third order interceptpoint. I also studied the intelligent transportation system’s channel layout inEurope, how the interference of other systems are working in co-channel and adjacentchannels, and some proposals to use the allocated frequency bands. On theother hand, the fundamentals of OFDM transmission and definitions of OFDMkey parameters in IEEE 802.11p are investigated.The focus of this work is on the measurement of transmitter frontend parametersof a new testbed designed and fabricated in order to be used at inter-vehiclecommunication based on IEEE 802.11p.</p> / Road safety applications, Vehicle-to-Vehicle communication

The number of vehicles has increased significantly in recent years, which causeshigh density in traffic and further problems like accidents and road congestions.A solution regarding to this problem is vehicle-to-vehicle communication, wherevehicles are able to communicate with their neighboring vehicles even in the absenceof a central base station, to provide safer and more efficient roads and toincrease passenger safety.The goal of this thesis is to investigate basic physical layer parameters of ainter-vehicle communication system, like emission power, spectral emission, errorvector magnitude, guard interval, ramp-up/down time, and third order interceptpoint. I also studied the intelligent transportation system’s channel layout inEurope, how the interference of other systems are working in co-channel and adjacentchannels, and some proposals to use the allocated frequency bands. On theother hand, the fundamentals of OFDM transmission and definitions of OFDMkey parameters in IEEE 802.11p are investigated.The focus of this work is on the measurement of transmitter frontend parametersof a new testbed designed and fabricated in order to be used at inter-vehiclecommunication based on IEEE 802.11p. / Road safety applications, Vehicle-to-Vehicle communication

The C2X Communication is of high interest to the automotive industry. Ongoing research on this topic mainly bases on the simulation of Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks. In order to estimate the necessary level of simulation details their impact on the results needs to be examined. This thesis focuses on different channel models as the freespace, shadowing, and Ricean model, along with varying parameters. For these simulations the network simulator ns-2 is extended to provide IEEE 802.11p compliance. However, the WAVE mode is not considered since it is still under development and not finally approved. Besides a more sophisticated packet error model than the existing implementation, as well as a link adaptation algorithm, is added. In this thesis several simulations examine specific details of wireless communication systems such as fairness of multiple access, interferences, throughput, and variability. Furthermore, the simulation points out some unexpected phenomena as starving nodes and saturation effects in multi hop networks. Those led to the conclusion that the IEEE 802.11 draft amendment does not solve known problems of the original IEEE 802.11 standard.

In recent years, Inter Vehicle Communication (IVC) has become an intensive research area, as part of Intelligent Transportation Systems. It supposes that all, or a subset of the vehicles is equipped with radio devices, enabling communication between them. IEEE 802.11p (standardized for vehicular communication) shows a great deal of promise. By using ad hoc mode, this radio technology allows vehicles to extend their scopes of communication and thus forming a Multi-hop wireless Ad-hoc NETwork, also called Vehicular Ad-hoc NETwork (VANET). This thesis addresses a fundamental problem of VANET: the network capacity. Two simple theoretical models to estimate this capacity have been proposed: a packing model and a Markovian point process model. They offer simple and closed formulae on the maximum number of simultaneous transmitters, and on the distribution of the distance between them. An accurate upper bound on the maximum capacity had been derived. An analytical formula on distribution of the transmitters had been presented. This distribution allows us to optimize Clear Channel Assessment (CCA) parameters that leads to an optimization of the network capacity.In order to validate the approach of this thesis, results from the analytical models are compared to simulations performed with the network simulator NS-3. Simulation parameters was estimated from real experimentation. Impact of different traffic distributions (traffic of vehicles) on the network capacity is also studied. This thesis also focuses on extended perception map applications, which use information from local and distant sensors to offer driving assistance (autonomous driving, collision warning, etc.). Extended perception requires a high bandwidth that might not be available in practice in classical IEEE 802.11p ad hoc networks. Therefore, this thesis proposes an adaptive power control algorithm optimized for this particular application. It shows through an analytical model and a large set of simulations that the network capacity is then significantly increased.

Le cadre général de cette thèse porte sur les communications véhicule à véhicule (V2V). L'objectif principal de ce type de communication est d'améliorer la sécurité routière et d'optimiser la fluidité du trafic. Les performances de systèmes de communication embarqués dépendent principalement de la configuration des antennes, du type de récepteurs utilisés (modem) et du canal de propagation. Le sujet de la thèse se concentre précisément sur l'élaboration d'un outil de simulation robuste et fiable pour optimiser les choix technologiques d'antennes et leurs implantations à bord. Il permettra de limiter ainsi le recours aux prototypes et aux essais de roulage. Dans un premier temps, nous avons proposé une méthode de type géométrique-stochastique pour modéliser des canaux de propagation d'un système de communication V2V. Cette méthode permet de définir des scénarios dynamiques et sa flexibilité nous offre l'opportunité de paramétrer les caractéristiques d'un canal de propagation. Nous montrons pour l'essentiel de quelle manière l'agencement et le nombre de diffuseurs de forme simple peuvent contribuer à influencer les statistiques de l'étalement des retards, la distribution des angles d'arrivée et les spectres Doppler. Dans la deuxième partie de ces travaux, nous nous focalisons sur la problématique d'intégration d'antenne. Il a été constaté qu'il est particulièrement utile de simplifier la maquette numérique du véhicule complet lors d'une simulation électromagnétique de l'antenne intégrée à bord de ce véhicule. De plus, dans cette section, nous avons étudié la limite de la validité de substitution d'une antenne intégrée à bord par son seul diagramme de rayonnement dans les modèles de canaux de propagation. A partir de cette étude, nous en avons déduit, que les interactions électromagnétiques avec les éléments se situant dans le champ-proche n'étaient plus valides. Ainsi, une stratégie de correction a été trouvée en considérant l'élément en champ proche dans la simulation initiale de l'antenne intégrée sur le véhicule. L'évaluation des performances d'antennes, en termes de taux d'erreurs paquet, après l'implémentation de la couche physique du standard 802. 11 p, est au cœur de la troisième partie de cette thèse. Des résultats de simulation, pour chaque configuration d'antenne, ont été donnés pour plusieurs combinaisons de paramètres de couche PHY tels que le débit et la longueur de paquet. La dernière partie de ce manuscrit traite de la présentation d'une campagne de mesure qui a été réalisée principalement dans un environnement de type rural. Les essais de roulage avaient pour but de démontrer la capacité des méthodes de simulation à faire un choix approprié d'installation d'antenne. Nous avons constaté que les tendances attendues des performances de communication en termes de PER sont globalement prévisibles à partir de notre modèle bien que nous ayons obtenu des résultats surprenants dans certains cas. Ce qui nécessitera une enquête plus approfondie. / The general framework of this Ph.D. thesis deals with Vehicle to Vehicle (V2V) communications. This communication is principally dedicated to reinforce security through exchange of information between vehicles in case of unexpected events. The development of V2V solutions requires the understanding and merging of a number of techniques from several communication technology areas. Indeed, the performance of these systems are related to three main blocks: the implementation of the modems, the antenna configuration and the fast varying electromagnetic environment surrounding the transmitter and the receiver. The purpose of this PhD thesis is precisely to elaborate a design strategy to investigate all the different blocks constituting the communication chain. The ultimate goal is to optimize antenna selection and location on board the vehicle. In the first place, we proposed a geometry-based stochastic channel modelling approach to develop virtual dynamic scenarios. It was shown that the most common propagation environments such as rural, highway or urban-like propagation channels are reached through adjustment or numbers and location of simple metallic plates. Using this method, we are able to emulate the characteristics, such as the delay spread, angles of arrival distribution and the Doppler spectrum, of these typical driving scenarios. Moreover, we dealt with antenna integration problems in the second part of this work. A study on the simplification of numerical models of vehicles was carried out. Furthermore in this section, we investigated the limit of validity of representing the integrated antenna on board vehicle solely by its radiation pattern. We deduced from this study that the interactions with the elements present in the near-field is no longer valid. Thus, a strategy to alleviate the degree of error was found upon consideration of the near-field scatter in the a-priori simulation of the antenna integrated on the vehicle. In the third part of this thesis, we evaluated the performance of different antenna configurations in terms of packet error rate after the embodiment of the PHY layer of the LEEE 802.11p standard. Simulation results, for each antenna configurations, was given for several combinations of PHY layer parameters such as data rate and packet length. The last part of this manuscript is dedicated to the presentation of a measurement campaign that was carried out in a rural driving environment. Results obtained from these functional tests were confronted with simulation results to demonstrate the strength of the latter. We found that the expected trends in communication performance in terms of PER are globally predictable from our model though we obtained surprising results in some cases, needing further investigation.

This work explores possibilities of Car2Car and Car2X communication. It contains survey of system properties, types of transmission messages, etc. It represents architecture of the system and deals with technical expectations and limitations of system. In the light of the fact that this work is created in the time, when development of this system hasn’t finished yet, the work doesn’t contain details which would allow deeper technical view about area of vehicular communication. The work also deals with the possibility of realization of device, communicating with a similar standard. Like the most suitable standard was chosen an IEEE 802.11a. Mobile unit has been realized by single board computer Mini 2440 and communication has been realized by WiFi module OWS451i, which works as AT modem. Mini 2440 and infrastructure server are based on Linux operation system.

New cooperative intelligent transportation system (C-ITS) applications become enabled thanks to advances in communication technologies between vehicles(V2V) and with the infrastructure (V2I). Communicating vehicles share information with each other and cooperate, which results in improved safety, fuel economy, and traffic efficiency. An example of a C-ITS application is platooning, which comprises a string of vehicles that travel together with short inter-vehicle distances (IVDs). Any solution related to C-ITS must comply with high safety requirements in order to pass standardization and be commercially deployed. Furthermore, trusted safety levels should be assured even for critical scenarios. This thesis studies the conditions that guarantee safety in emergency braking scenarios for heterogeneous platooning, or string-like, formations of vehicles. In such scenarios, the vehicle at the head of the string emergency brakes and all following vehicles have to automatically react in time to avoid rear-end collisions. The reaction time can be significantly decreased with vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communication usage since the leader can explicitly inform other platooning members about the critical braking. The safety analysis conducted in the thesis yields computationally efficient methods and algorithms for calculating minimum inter-vehicle distances that allow avoiding rear-end collisions with a predefined high guarantee. These IVDs are theoretically obtained for an open-loop and a closed-loop configurations. The former implies that follower drives with a constant velocity until braking starts, whereas in the latter, an adaptive cruise control (ACC) with a constant-distance policy serves as a controller. In addition, further optimization of inter-vehicle distances in the platoon is carried out under an assumption of centralized control. Such an approach allows achieving better fuel consumption and road utilization. The performed analytical comparison suggests that our proposed V2V communication based solution is superior to classical automated systems, such as automatic emergency braking system (AEBS), which utilizes only onboard sensors and no communication. Wireless communication, enabling to know the intentions of other vehicles almost immediately, allows for smaller IVDs whilst guaranteeing the same level of safety. Overall, the presented thesis highlights the importance of C-ITS and, specifically, V2V in the prevention of rear-end collisions in emergency scenarios. Future work directions include an extension of the obtained results by considering more advanced models of vehicles, environment, and communication settings; and applying the proposed algorithms of safety guaranteeing to other controllers, such as ACC with a constant time headway policy.