Sidelink Evolution Toward 5G-A/6G Future Considerations for Standardization of Group Communications

Sidelink communication technology has gained prominence in the recent years, with support for advanced V2X and machine-type communications by providing a direct interface between user devices. Recent 3GPP releases (up to Rel. 17) have introduced many additional features to sidelink, such as relaying and discontinuous reception to improve Quality of Service (QoS) and reduce power consumption. Further enhancements to sidelink, such as carrier aggregation, are currently being discussed in 3GPP working groups to be specified in Rel. 18 and beyond. In this work, challenges related to sidelink group communications are identified as recommendations to be addressed in future releases. With simulation analysis, the identified challenges, such as sidelink group resource management and inter-cell interference are shown to affect the QoS of group of devices communicating using the sidelink interface. © 2017 IEEE.