Experimental evaluation of 5.9 GHz link asymmetry using standards-compliant implementation

This paper presents an analysis of link asymmetry in 5.9GHz vehicular communication by means of on-road experiments, and using a standard compliant vehicular communication platform. Similar works have been conducted in the last decades, especially by relevant industrial stakeholders, but none or only little information has been disclosed to the public. The link asymmetry may have considerable impact on the performance of the adopted communication protocols, therefore it is highly important to study such a topic and share the outcomes with the researcher community; this is one of the main motivations behind this contribution. The importance of the results is twofold: first we show that the antenna position on the car roof has a considerable impact on the communication link, and second we demonstrate that the link symmetry is not as worst as can be imagined since the experiments show that a link can still have a good symmetry up to 300 meters of distance between two connected vehicles.