5G New Radio Sidelink Link-Level Simulator and Performance Analysis

Since the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) specified 5G New Radio (NR) sidelink in Release 16, researchers have been expressing increasing interest in sidelink in various research areas, such as Proximity Services (ProSe) and Vehicle-to-Everything (V2X). It is essential to provide researchers with a comprehensive simulation platform that allows for extensive NR sidelink link-level evaluations. In this paper, we introduce the first publicly accessible 5G NR link-level simulator that supports sidelink. Our MATLAB-based simulator complies with the 3GPP 5G NR sidelink standards, and offers flexible control over various Physical Layer (PHY) configurations. It will facilitate researcher's exploration in NR sidelink with a friendly access to the key network parameters and great potential of customized simulations on algorithm developments and performance evaluations. This paper also provides several initial link-level simulation results on sidelink using the developed simulator.