Link Level Analysis of NR V2X Sidelink Communications

The Internet of Vehicles (IoV) will interconnect vehicles, vulnerable road users, and infrastructure nodes for a safer, more efficient, and digitalized mobility. In the IoV vision, traditional network-based communications will be complemented with direct sidelink (SL) vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communications. To this aim, third generation partnership project (3GPP) introduced in Release 16 the new radio (NR) V2X SL technology. The NR V2X SL standard includes important physical (PHY)-layer novelties with respect to LTE V2X SL and NR uplink/downlink, and is characterized by a large set of configurable parameters. However, existing NR V2X SL link level (LL) studies focus on a confined set of configurations. This limits a thorough understanding of the NR V2X SL LL performance and impacts the accuracy of system level evaluations, which typically leverage LL models to accurately represent the PHY layer performance. These models are based on look-up tables (LUTs) that map the LL performance, e.g., block error rate (BLER), as a function of the link quality, e.g., signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). This study presents an exhaustive NR V2X SL LL evaluation that analyzes the impact of relevant PHY layer aspects, e.g., modulation and coding scheme, channel model, and transmitter-receiver relative speed, considering the wide set of configurations recommended by 3GPP and European Telecommunications Standards Institute. The obtained standard-compliant LUTs are openly released, representing the largest NR V2X SL LL data set available. The released data set represents a valuable asset for the community, as it allows exhaustive NR V2X SL system level investigations under a broad range of settings and configurations.