The development of autonomous ground and aerial vehicles has driven the requirement for radio access technologies (RATs) to support low latency applications. While onboard sensors such as Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR), Radio Detection and Ranging (RADAR), and cameras can sense and assess the immediate space around the vehicle, RATs are crucial for the exchange of information on critical events, such as accidents and changes in trajectory, with other vehicles and surrounding infrastructure in a timely manner. Simulations and analytical models are critical in modelling and designing efficient networks. In this dissertation, we focus on (a) proposing and developing algorithms to improve the performance of decentralized vehicular communications in safety critical situations and (b) supporting these proposals with simulation and analysis of the two most popular RAT standards, the Dedicated Short Range Communications (DSRC) standard, and the Cellular vehicle-to-everything (C-V2X) standard. In our first contribution, we propose a risk based protocol for vehicles using the DSRC standard. The protocol allows a higher beacon transmission rate for vehicles that are at a higher risk of collision. We verify the benefits of the risk based protocol over conventional DSRC using ns-3 simulations. Two risk based beacon rate protocols are evaluated in our ns-3 simulator, one that adapts the beacon rate between 1 and 10 Hz, and another between 1 and 20 Hz. Our results show that both protocols improve the packet delivery ratio (PDR) performance by up to 45% in congested environments using the 1-10 Hz adaptive beacon rate protocol and by 38% using the 1-20 Hz adaptive scheme. The two adaptive beacon rate protocol simulation results also show that the likelihood of a vehicle collision due to missed packets decreases by up to 41% and 77% respectively, in a three lane dense highway scenario with 160 vehicles operating at different speeds. In our second contribution, we study the performance of a distance based transmission protocol for vehicular ad hoc network (VANET) using tools from stochastic geometry. We consider a risk based transmission protocol where vehicles transmit more frequently depending on the distance to adjacent vehicles. We evaluate two transmission policies, a listen more policy, in which the transmission rate of vehicles decreases as the inter-vehicular distance decreases, and a talk more policy, in which the transmission rate of vehicles increases as the distance to the vehicle ahead of it decreases. We model the layout of a highway using a 1-D Poisson Point process (PPP) and analyze the performance of a typical receiver in this highway setting. We characterize the success probability of a typical link assuming slotted ALOHA as the channel access scheme. We study the trends in success probability as a function of system parameters. Our third contribution includes improvements to the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) Release 14 C-V2X standard, evaluated using a modified collision framework. In C-V2X basic safety messages (BSMs) are transmitted through Mode-4 communications, introduced in Release 14. Mode-4 communications operate under the principle of sensing-based semi-persistent scheduling (SPS), where vehicles sense and schedule transmissions without a base station present. We propose an improved adaptive semi-persistent scheduling, termed Ch-RRI SPS, for Mode-4 C-V2X networks. Specifically, Ch-RRI SPS allows each vehicle to dynamically adjust in real-time the BSM rate, referred to in the LTE standard as the resource reservation interval (RRI). Our study based on system level simulations demonstrates that Ch-RRI SPS greatly outperforms SPS in terms of both on-road safety performance, measured as collision risk, and network performance, measured as packet delivery ratio, in all considered C-V2X scenarios. In high density scenarios, e.g., 80 vehicles/km, Ch-RRI SPS shows a collision risk reduction of 51.27%, 51.20% and 75.41% when compared with SPS with 20 ms, 50 ms, and 100 ms RRI respectively. In our fourth and final contribution, we look at the tracking error and age-of-information (AoI) of the latest 3GPP Release 16 NR-V2X standard, which includes enhancements to the 3GPP Release 14 C-V2X standard. The successor to Mode-4 C-V2X, known as Mode-2a NR-V2X, makes slight changes to sensing-based semi-persistent scheduling (SPS), though vehicles can still sense and schedule transmissions without a base station present. We use AoI and tracking error, which is the freshness of the information at the receiver and the difference in estimated vs actual location of a transmitting vehicle respectively, to measure the impact of lost and outdated BSMs on a vehicle's ability to localize neighboring vehicles. In this work, we again show that such BSM scheduling (with a fixed RRI) suffers from severe under- and over- utilization of radio resources, which severely compromises timely dissemination of BSMs and increases the system AoI and tracking error. To address this, we propose an RRI selection algorithm that measures the age or freshness of messages from neighboring vehicles to select an RRI, termed Age of Information (AoI)-aware RRI (AoI-RRI) selection. Specifically, AoI-aware SPS (i) measures the neighborhood AoI (as opposed to channel availability) to select an age-optimal RRI and (ii) uses a modified SPS procedure with the chosen RRI to select BSM transmission opportunities that minimize the overall system AoI. We compare AoI-RRI SPS to Ch-RRI SPS and fixed RRI SPS for NR-V2X. Our experiments based on the Mode-2a NR-V2X standard implemented using system level simulations show both Ch-RRI SPS and AoI-RRI SPS outperform SPS in high density scenarios in terms of tracking error and age-of-information. / Doctor of Philosophy / An increasing number of vehicles are equipped with a large set of on-board sensors that enable and support autonomous capabilities. Such sensors, which include Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR), Radio Detection and Ranging (RADAR), and cameras, are meant to increase passenger and driver safety. However, similar to humans, these sensors are limited to line-of-sight (LOS) visibility, meaning they cannot see beyond other vehicles, corners, and buildings. For this reason, efficient vehicular communications are essential to the next generation of vehicles and could significantly improve road safety. In addition, vehicular communications enable the timely exchange of critical information with other vehicles, cellular and roadside infrastructure, and pedestrians. However, unlike typical wireless and cellular networks, vehicular networks are expected to operate in a distributed manner, as there is no guarantee of the presence of cellular infrastructure. Accurate simulations and analytical models are critical in improving and guaranteeing the performance of the next generation of vehicular networks. In this dissertation, we propose and develop novel and practical distributed algorithms to enhance the performance of decentralized vehicular communications. We support these algorithms with computer simulations and analytical tools from the field of stochastic geometry.

Vehicular communications are a major subject of research and policy activity in industry, government, and academia. Dedicated Short-Range Communications (DSRC) is currently the main protocol used for vehicular communications, and it operates in the 5.9 GHz band. In addition to DSRC radios, other potential uses of this band include Wi-Fi, LTE-V, and communication among unlicensed devices. This dissertation presents an architecture and a feasibility analysis including field measurements and analysis for vehicle-to-train (V2T) communications, a safety-critical vehicular communication application. The dissertation also presents a survey of research relevant to each of several possible combinations of radio-spectrum and vehicular-safety regulations that would affect use of the 5.9 GHz band, identifies the most challenging of the possible resulting technical challenges, and presents initial measurements to assess feasibility of sharing the band by DSRC radios and other devices that operate on adjacent frequencies using different wireless communication standards. Although wireless technology is available for safety-critical communications, few applications have been developed to improve railroad crossing safety. A V2T communication system for a safety warning application with DSRC radios can address the need to prevent collisions between trains and vehicles. The dissertation presents a V2T early warning application architecture with a safety notification time and distance. We conducted channel measurements at a 5.86–5.91-GHz frequency and 5.9-GHz DSRC performance measurements at railroad crossings in open spaces, shadowed environments, and rural and suburban environments related to the presented V2T architecture. Our measurements and analyses show that the DSRC protocol can be adapted to serve the purpose of a V2T safety warning system. The 5.9 GHz band has been sought after by several stakeholders, including traditional mobile operators, DSRC proponents, unlicensed Wi-Fi proponents and Cellular-Vehicle-to-Everything (C-V2X) proponents. The FCC and National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), the two major organizations that are responsible for regulations related to vehicular communications, have not finalized rules regarding this band. The relative merits of the above mentioned wireless communication standards and coexistence issues between these standards are complex. There has been considerable research devoted to understanding the performance of these standards, but in some instances there are gaps in needed research. We have analyzed regulation scenarios that FCC and NHTSA are likely to consider and have identified the technical challenges associated with these potential regulatory scenarios. The technical challenges are presented and for each a survey of relevant technical literature is presented. In our opinion for the most challenging technical requirements that could be mandated by new regulations are interoperability between DSRC and C-V2X and the ability to detect either adjacent channel or co-channel coexisting interference. We conducted initial measurements to evaluate the feasibility of adjacent channel coexistence between DSRC, Wi-Fi, and C-V2X, which is one of the possible regulatory scenarios. We set DSRC at Channel 172, Wi-Fi at Channel 169 for 20 MHz bandwidth and at Channel 167 for 40 MHz, and C-V2X at Channel 174 with almost 100% spectrum capacity. From the measurements, we observed almost no effects on DSRC performance due to adjacent channel interference. Based on our results, we concluded that adjacent channel coexistence between DSRC, C-V2X, and Wi-Fi is possible. DSRC systems can provide good communication range; however, the range is likely to be reduced in the presence of interference and / or Non-Line-of-Sight (NLoS) conditions. Such environmental factors are the major influence on DSRC performance. By knowing the relationship between DSRC and environmental factors, DSRC radios can be set up in a way that promotes good performance in an environment of interest. We chose propagation channel characteristics to generate DSRC performance modelling by using estimation methods. The conducted DSRC performance measurements and propagation channel characteristics are independent; however, they share the same distance parameters. Results of linear regression to analyze the relationship between DSRC performance and propagation channel characteristics indicate that additional V2T measurements are required to provide data for more precise modeling. / PHD / Researchers and regulators in industry, government, and academic institutions are interested in vehicular communications. Dedicated Short-Range Communications (DSRC) is currently the standard protocol for communication between vehicles, including for safety applications, and operates in the band of radio frequencies near 5.9 GHz. In addition to operators of DSRC radios, other potential users are interested in using the 5.9 GHz band. This dissertation presents an architecture and a feasibility analysis including field measurements for vehicle-to-train (V2T) communications, a safety-critical vehicular communication application. The dissertation also identifies major technical challenges that could become important in the future for users of the 5.9 GHz band. The challenges will be different depending on what decisions government regulators make about the types of radios and communication protocols that are allowed in the 5.9 GHz band and about which types of radios should be used for vehicular safety. Although wireless technology is available for safety-critical communications, few applications have been developed to improve railroad crossing safety. To prevent collisions between trains and vehicles, we present a vehicle-to-train (V2T) communication system that uses DSRC radios to provide safety warnings to motorists. Although the term V2T is used, the emphasis is on communication from the train to vehicles. We present a high-level design, or architecture, of the warning system that includes goals for safety notification time and vi distance. We conducted measurements of radio channels near 5.9 GHz as well as measurements of 5.9 GHz DSRC radio link performance at the same locations (railroad crossings in open spaces, shadowed or obstructed environments, and rural and suburban environments). The measurements were performed to help decide whether the V2T warning system architecture would work. A DSRC system can provide good communication range; however, that range could be reduced if the DSRC system experiences interference from other radios or if the signal is partially blocked due to objects between the DSRC radios. The environmental factors are the most important influence on DSRC performance. By knowing the relationship between DSRC and environmental factors, manufacturers and operators can set up the radios to perform well in environments of interest. Although DSRC performance and radio channel characteristics were measured separately, they were measured in the same locations near railroad crossings. This made it possible to perform a statistical analysis of the relationship between DSRC performance and propagation channel characteristics. This analysis indicated that additional measurements will be required to collect enough data to develop robust statistical models that relate DSRC performance directly to measured channel characteristics. However, the results of the V2T measurements that we conducted near rural and suburban railroad crossings with varying numbers and types of obstacles to the radio signals provide a strong indication that DSRC can be used for to provide V2T safety warnings. The 5.9 GHz band has been sought after by several stakeholders, including traditional mobile operators and others who support use of the band for DSRC, unlicensed Wi-Fi, and CellularVehicle-to-Everything (C-V2X) communication. The FCC and National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), the two major organizations that are responsible for vii regulations related to vehicular communications, have not finalized the rules regarding this band. The relative merits of the above mentioned communication standards and coexistence issues between these standards are complex. There has been considerable research devoted to understanding the performance of these standards, but in some instances there are gaps in needed research. We have analyzed regulation scenarios that FCC and NHTSA are likely to consider and have identified the technical challenges associated with these potential regulatory scenarios. The technical challenges are presented and for each a survey of relevant technical literature is presented. In our opinion for the most challenging technical requirements that could result from new regulations are interoperability between DSRC and C-V2X and the ability to detect either adjacent channel or co-channel coexisting interference. We conducted initial measurements to evaluate the feasibility of adjacent channel coexistence between DSRC, Wi-Fi, and C-V2X, which is one of the possible regulatory scenarios. From the measurements, we observed almost no effect on DSRC performance when other types of radios used frequencies adjacent to the frequencies used by the DSRC radios. Based on our results, we concluded that adjacent channel coexistence between DSRC, C-V2X, and Wi-Fi is possible.

With the rapid advances of technology, digitisation of many facets of our existence is taking place in an attempt to improve everyday life. The automotive industry is following suit, attempting to introduce connected traffic technology that is meant to improve traffic fluidity and safety. To facilitate this, connected vehicles aim to create solutions for the sharing of information between other vehicles, infrastructure - such as traffic light controllers, and pedestrians. In an attempt to further investigate the connected vehicle landscape of today, the thesis compared the two most prominent technologies, DSRC and cellular communication. An essential part of this comparison was highlighting the potential attacks that the two technologies could be exposed to. This was done in order to open up a discussion on what technology is the most suitable to focus on for the future both in terms of viability and security. DSRC has been considered the prominent communication technology for connected vehicles, but the development has stagnated. As such, the ever-evolving cellular technology is looking like the superior technology. This, however, is reliant on 5G delivering the speeds, stability and security promised. The state of constant vehicular connection is going to lead to many issues and concerns, both for the privacy of the individual but also the safety of the public. While connected traffic aims to solve a number of issues from traffic accidents to emissions - if the security of the communication is not constantly evolving to meet the rapid development of new technology, the consequences of connecting such a delicate system might nullify the potential benefits.

Vehicular communication networks are essential to the development of intelligent navigation systems and improvement of road safety. Unlike most terrestrial networks of today, vehicular networks are characterized by stringent reliability and latency requirements. In order to design efficient networks to meet these requirements, it is important to understand the system-level performance of vehicular networks. Stochastic geometry has recently emerged as a powerful tool for the modeling and analysis of wireless communication networks. However, the canonical spatial models such as the 2D Poisson point process (PPP) does not capture the peculiar spatial layout of vehicular networks, where the locations of vehicular nodes are restricted to roadways. Motivated by this, we consider a doubly stochastic spatial model that captures the spatial coupling between the vehicular nodes and the roads and analyze the performance of vehicular communication networks. We model the spatial layout of roads by a Poisson line process (PLP) and the locations of nodes on each line (road) by a 1D PPP, thereby forming a Cox process driven by a PLP or Poisson line Cox process (PLCP). In this dissertation, we develop the theory of the PLCP and apply it to study key performance metrics such as coverage probability and rate coverage for vehicular networks under different scenarios. First, we compute the signal-to-interference plus noise ratio (SINR)-based success probability of the typical communication link in a vehicular ad hoc network (VANET). Using this result, we also compute the area spectral efficiency (ASE) of the network. Our results show that the optimum transmission probability that maximizes the ASE of the network obtained for the Cox process differs significantly from that of the conventional 1D and 2D PPP models. Second, we calculate the signal-to-interference ratio (SIR)-based downlink coverage probability of the typical receiver in a vehicular network for the cellular network model in which each receiver node connects to its closest transmitting node in the network. The conditioning on the serving node imposes constraints on the spatial configuration of interfering nodes and also the underlying distribution of lines. We carefully handle these constraints using various fundamental distance properties of the PLCP and derive the exact expression for the coverage probability. Third, building further on the above mentioned works, we consider a more complex cellular vehicle-to-everything (C-V2X) communication network in which the vehicular nodes are served by roadside units (RSUs) as well as cellular macro base stations (MBSs). For this setup, we present the downlink coverage analysis of the typical receiver in the presence of shadowing effects. We address the technical challenges induced by the inclusion of shadowing effects by leveraging the asymptotic behavior of the Cox process. These results help us gain useful insights into the behavior of the networks as a function of key network parameters, such as the densities of the nodes and selection bias. Fourth, we characterize the load on the MBSs due to vehicular users, which is defined as the number of vehicular nodes that are served by the MBS. Since the limited network resources are shared by multiple users in the network, the load distribution is a key indicator of the demand of network resources. We first compute the distribution of the load on MBSs due to vehicular users in a single-tier vehicular network. Building on this, we characterize the load on both MBSs and RSUs in a heterogeneous C-V2X network. Using these results, we also compute the rate coverage of the typical receiver in the network. Fifth and last, we explore the applications of the PLCP that extend beyond vehicular communications. We derive the exact distribution of the shortest path distance between the typical point and its nearest neighbor in the sense of path distance in a Manhattan Poisson line Cox process (MPLCP), which is a special variant of the PLCP. The analytical framework developed in this work allows us to answer several important questions pertaining to transportation networks, urban planning, and personnel deployment. / Doctor of Philosophy / Vehicular communication networks are essential to the development of intelligent transportation systems (ITS) and improving road safety. As the in-vehicle sensors can assess only their immediate environment, vehicular nodes exchange information about critical events, such as accidents and sudden braking, with other vehicles, pedestrians, roadside infrastructure, and cellular base stations in order to make critical decisions in a timely manner. Considering the time-sensitive nature of this information, it is of paramount importance to design efficient communication networks that can support the exchange of this information with reliable and high-speed wireless links. Typically, prior to actual deployment, any design of a wireless network is subject to extensive analysis under various operational scenarios using computer simulations. However, it is not viable to rely entirely on simulations for the system design of highly complex systems, such as the vehicular networks. Hence, it is necessary to develop analytical methods that can complement simulators and also serve as a benchmark. One of the approaches that has gained popularity in the recent years for the modeling and analysis of large-scale wireless networks is the use of tools from stochastic geometry. In this approach, we endow the locations of wireless nodes with some distribution and analyze various aspects of the network by leveraging the properties of the distribution. Traditionally, wireless networks have been studied using simple spatial models in which the wireless nodes can lie anywhere on the domain of interest (often a 1D or a 2D plane). However, vehicular networks have a unique spatial geometry because the locations of vehicular nodes are restricted to roadways. Therefore, in order to model the locations of vehicular nodes in the network, we have to first model the underlying road systems. Further, we should also consider the randomness in the locations of vehicles on each road. So, we consider a doubly stochastic model called Poisson line Cox process (PLCP), in which the spatial layout of roads are modeled by random lines and the locations of vehicles on the roads are modeled by random set of points on these lines. As is usually the case in wireless networks, multiple vehicular nodes and roadside units (RSUs) operate at the same frequency due to the limited availability of radio frequency spectrum, which causes interference. Therefore, any receiver in the network obtains a signal that is a mixture of the desired signal from the intended transmitter and the interfering signals from the other transmitters. The ratio of the power of desired signal to the aggregate power of the interfering signals, which is called as the signal-to-interference ratio (SIR), depends on the locations of the transmitters with respect to the receiver. A receiver in the network is said to be in coverage if the SIR measured at the location of the receiver exceeds the required threshold to successfully decode the message. The probability of occurrence of this event is referred to as the coverage probability and it is one of the fundamental metrics that is used to characterize the performance of a wireless network. In our work, we have analytically characterized the coverage probability of the typical vehicular node in the network. This was the first work to present the coverage analysis of a vehicular network using the aforementioned doubly stochastic model. In addition to coverage probability, we have also explored other performance metrics such as data rate, which is the number of bits that can be successfully communicated per unit time, and spectral efficiency. Our analysis has revealed interesting trends in the coverage probability as a function of key system parameters such as the density of roads in a region (total length of roads per unit area), and the density of vehicles on the roads. We have shown that the vehicular nodes in areas with high density of roads have lower coverage than those in areas with sparsely distributed roads. On the other hand, the coverage probability of a vehicular node improves as the density of vehicles on the roads increases. Such insights are quite useful in the design and deployment of network infrastructure. While our research was primarily focused on communication networks, the utility of the spatial models considered in these works extends to other areas of engineering. For a special variant of the PLCP, we have derived the distribution of the shortest path distance between an arbitrary point and its nearest neighbor in the sense of path distance. The analytical framework developed in this work allows us to answer several important questions pertaining to infrastructure planning and personnel deployment.

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