Building an SDVN Framework for RSU-Centric Cooperative Perception with Heterogeneous V2X

In Cooperative Intelligent Transportation System (C-ITS), cooperative perception emerges as a core application empowered by Vehicle-to-Everything (V2X) communications to improve road safety. Connected vehicles are able to share and receive sensor information from any other V2X-capable facilities. While most research interests lie in the utilization and integration of V2X data inside the connected vehicle systems, we stress the importance of understanding the unique role of roadside units (RSUs) for cooperative perception, as well as appropriate strategies for them to deliver this application. To that end, we designed an SDVN-based cooperative perception framework running on RSUs. By leveraging Dedicated Short-Range Communications (DSRC) and Millimeter Wave (mmWave) V2X, this framework system can adaptively support message-based cooperative perception and raw sensor data-based cooperative perception. In addition, we propose a DSRC-triggered dynamic sensor ON/OFF strategy to improve energy efficiency and RSU scheduling flexibility. The field trial results agree well with our design expectations, i.e., small delay for activation (<= 30 ms), significant power reduction (similar to 60%), and good scalability.