On the Interplay between Scheduling Interval and Beamwidth Selection for Low-Latency and Reliable V2V mmWave Communications

Abstract

The interest in mmWave communications has risen sharply in the last years motivated by their widespread con- sideration as a technological solution capable of dealing with the stringent rate requirements currently demanded by wireless networks. This momentum gained by mmWave bands springs several technical challenges regarding the allocation of radio resources particularly complex in V2V communications, where reliability/latency constraints are extremely demanding, and links between vehicles are highly influenced by their mobility, beam misalignment and blockage between counterparts. In this context we analyze the interplay between the beamwidth assignment and the scheduling period when links between transmitters and receivers in V2V communications are established in a distributed fashion by means of Matching Theory. Extensive simulations performed for the aforementioned scheme and other alternatives from the literature reveal that, even in simplistic vehicular setups, the throughput performance and the latency/reliability trade-off is affected not only by the selected antenna beamwidths –and their suitability to the radio conditions imposed by the dynamics of the scenario under analysis– but also by a proper choice of the scheduling interval/beam realignment period. A poor choice in the latter for a given beamwidth being responsible of drop events increasing as much as 33% mainly due to beam misalignment.