Curvature based Antenna Selection Method Evaluated Using the Data Age Metric and V2V Measurements

In this paper, we compare a method for selecting transmission antenna based on road curvature to a method based on periodically alternating between left and right hand side transmission antennas. Both methods aim to improve the success rate for communication between participants in a platoon of vehicles. Moreover, we propose the data age metric for online use as input to the algorithm controlling the inter-vehicle distance in platooning, e.g. to decide appropriate gap between the vehicles depending on the V2V communication quality. The methods have been evaluated through V2V communication measurements performed using heavy duty vehicles on public highway. We show that, when using the curvature-based method, a 150 ms data age deadline is only missed approximately half as often compared to when periodically alternating between left and right hand side transmission antennas. The methods have also been compared for different antenna combinations.