LTE-V2X (C-V2X) Performance in Congested Highway Scenarios

Fast and reliable communication between vehicles is a key factor in improving the transportation safety. To enable such communication, the two main competing technologies are Cellular V2X (C-V2X or LTE-V2X) and IEEE 802.11p-based DSRC. This paper presents a comparison between the performance of C-V2X and DSRC in dense highway scenarios. C-V2X and DSRC implementations considered here are compliant to SAE J3161/1 and SAE J2945/1 standards, respectively. The results show that with a similar bandwidth of 10 MHz, in terms of both inter packet gap (IPG) and reliability, C-V2X performs better than DSRC at ranges greater than 100m, while both technologies exhibit good performance at shorter distances. Additionally, with SAE J3161/1-based one-shot transmissions for critical events, C-V2X performance at shorter distances is further enhanced. Moreover, with the larger bandwidth of 20 MHz, C-V2X further improves in performance.