Vehicular Channel Models: A System Level Performance Analysis of Tapped Delay Line Models

Accurate predictions of vehicular communication conditions are vital for the development of intelligent transport systems and services, both on link level through channel models, as well as packet error models on system level. In this paper we investigate simple, yet flexible tapped delay line channel models that capture the essential aspects of vehicular communications through asymmetric power spectral densities and well chosen Doppler and delay spreads. We demonstrate how to generate such asymmetric fading traces, and use the implementation on a channel emulator to measure packet error probabilities using software defined radios. We then analyze the received packet traces with respect to mean packet loss and burstiness, and show the influence of the line of sight obstruction and Doppler frequencies on the packet burst behavior. We are thus able to demonstrate the link of fine-grained packet statistics and underlying physical channels.