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Connected and Autonomous Vehicles: Sensors and Communication Technologies

A special issue of Sensors (ISSN 1424-8220). This special issue belongs to the section "Intelligent Sensors".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 July 2021) | Viewed by 14731

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
Department of Information Engineering, University of Padova, 35131 Padova PD, Italy
Interests: smart cities; internet of things; 5G systems
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Information Engineering, University of Padova, 35131 Padova PD, Italy
Interests: 5G/6G networks; millimeter-wave communication; vehicular communication
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Recent developments in software, hardware, and communication technologies have opened the way towards connected and autonomous vehicles (CAVs) as a means to improve road safety, traffic efficiency, and infotainment services. The potential of future CAVs can be fully unleashed through wireless communications with roadside units, vehicles, pedestrians, and, in principle, any other object/person that may interact with the vehicles. This concept, which is generally referred to as vehicle-to-everything (V2X) connectivity, makes it possible to collect and share signals and information from a variety of sensors, both in the vehicles and in the surrounding environments, paving the way to the creation of new services. These include the generation and maintenance of high-resolution road maps, cloud-assisted intelligent and cooperative driving, and lightless intersection crossing, as well as new social services, distributed gaming, intelligent and green vehicle sharing, and so on. To this end, future vehicles will need to disseminate the acquisitions from their on-board sophisticated sensors, such as light detection and ranging (LiDAR), cameras, radars, etc., whose latency, throughput, and reliability requirements may saturate the capacity of current communication technologies.

On one hand, exploiting new frequency bands, like the lower part of the millimeter-wave spectrum, attracts attention because these bands can theoretically enable connections with data rates on the order of multi-gigabits-per-second. At the same time, it is important to design techniques that select the information to be distributed over bandwidth-constrained communication channels, especially in dense urban environments with a large number of vehicles, based on the value of such information for the target service(s). However, defining and evaluating the value of information is an open challenge.

This Special Issue encourages authors from academia and industry to submit new research results about technological and communication innovations for autonomous vehicles. We look forward to submissions that characterize the information flow generated by different types of sensors in a V2X scenario and the requirements of innovative services, and that study how to optimize data dissemination based on the value that such information has for the target services, while avoiding network congestion. This Special Issue is also open to contributions that propose and validate the use of new technological solutions for V2X communications in view of the strict requirements of future V2X services.

The Special Issue topics include, but are not limited to, the following:

  • Wireless communication technologies for autonomous vehicles;
  • Millimeter-wave V2X communications;
  • Data-driven techniques in vehicular communication systems;
  • Efficient data dissemination in vehicular communication systems;
  • Challenges of sensors’ data dissemination in a commercial vehicular system;
  • New sensor technologies for V2X services;
  • Algorithms for sensor-based object detection and/or tracking in vehicular scenarios;
  • Algorithms for sensor-based data compression in vehicular networks;
  • On-board vs. edge-assisted sensor processing in vehicular networks;
  • 5G/B5G-based sensing solutions for autonomous cars;
  • Enhanced context-awareness and environmental mapping algorithms based on V2X;
  • Interference and mobility management for wireless autonomous vehicles.

Prof. Dr. Andrea Zanella
Dr. Marco Giordani
Guest Editors

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Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

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12 pages, 3397 KiB  
Communication
Heterogeneous (ITS-G5 and 5G) Vehicular Pilot Road Weather Service Platform in a Realistic Operational Environment
by Muhammad Naeem Tahir and Marcos Katz
Sensors 2021, 21(5), 1676; https://doi.org/10.3390/s21051676 - 1 Mar 2021
Cited by 19 | Viewed by 3524
Abstract
VANETs (Vehicular Ad hoc Networks) operating in conjunction with road-side infrastructure connecting road-side infrastructure are an emerging field of wireless communication technology in the vehicular communication’s domain. For VANETs, the IEEE 802.11p-based ITS-G5 is one of the key standards for communication globally. This [...] Read more.
VANETs (Vehicular Ad hoc Networks) operating in conjunction with road-side infrastructure connecting road-side infrastructure are an emerging field of wireless communication technology in the vehicular communication’s domain. For VANETs, the IEEE 802.11p-based ITS-G5 is one of the key standards for communication globally. This research work integrates the ITS-G5 with a cellular-based 5G Test Network (5GTN). The resulting advanced heterogeneous Vehicular Network (VN) test-bed works as an effective platform for traffic safety between vehicles and road-side-infrastructure. This test-bed network provides a flexible framework to exploit vehicle-based weather data and road observation information, creating a service architecture for VANETs that supports real-time intelligent traffic services. The network studied in this paper aims to deliver improved road safety by providing real-time weather forecast, road friction information and road traffic related services. This article presents the implementation of a realistic test-bed in Northern Finland and the field measurement results of the heterogeneous VANETs considering the speed of vehicle, latency, good-put time and throughput. The field measurement results have been obtained in a state-of-the-art hybrid VANET system supporting special road weather services. Based on field measurement results, we suggest an efficient solution for a comprehensive hybrid vehicular networking infrastructure exploiting road weather information. Full article
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Review

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24 pages, 980 KiB  
Review
Collaborative Autonomous Driving—A Survey of Solution Approaches and Future Challenges
by Sumbal Malik, Manzoor Ahmed Khan and Hesham El-Sayed
Sensors 2021, 21(11), 3783; https://doi.org/10.3390/s21113783 - 29 May 2021
Cited by 46 | Viewed by 9533
Abstract
Sooner than expected, roads will be populated with a plethora of connected and autonomous vehicles serving diverse mobility needs. Rather than being stand-alone, vehicles will be required to cooperate and coordinate with each other, referred to as cooperative driving executing the mobility tasks [...] Read more.
Sooner than expected, roads will be populated with a plethora of connected and autonomous vehicles serving diverse mobility needs. Rather than being stand-alone, vehicles will be required to cooperate and coordinate with each other, referred to as cooperative driving executing the mobility tasks properly. Cooperative driving leverages Vehicle to Vehicle (V2V) and Vehicle to Infrastructure (V2I) communication technologies aiming to carry out cooperative functionalities: (i) cooperative sensing and (ii) cooperative maneuvering. To better equip the readers with background knowledge on the topic, we firstly provide the detailed taxonomy section describing the underlying concepts and various aspects of cooperation in cooperative driving. In this survey, we review the current solution approaches in cooperation for autonomous vehicles, based on various cooperative driving applications, i.e., smart car parking, lane change and merge, intersection management, and platooning. The role and functionality of such cooperation become more crucial in platooning use-cases, which is why we also focus on providing more details of platooning use-cases and focus on one of the challenges, electing a leader in high-level platooning. Following, we highlight a crucial range of research gaps and open challenges that need to be addressed before cooperative autonomous vehicles hit the roads. We believe that this survey will assist the researchers in better understanding vehicular cooperation, its various scenarios, solution approaches, and challenges. Full article
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