Measurements Based Channel Characterization for Vehicle-to-Vehicle Communications at Merging Lanes on Highway

This paper presents results for vehicle-to-vehicle channel characterization based on measurements conducted for a merging lane scenario on a highway. We present power delay profiles as well as channel gains and analyze important propagation mechanisms to see the impact of line-of-sight (LOS) and the antenna radiation pattern on the total received power. It is found that the absence of LOS and strong scattering objects, close to the point where the ramp merges with a highway may result in poor received signal strength. The probability of dropping packets also increases where there is LOS between TX and RX but the antenna pattern is not omni-directional. A dip in the antenna pattern affects the received signal strength severely which poses a challenge for vehicle-to-vehicle communication in safety critical situations.