Effects of Vegetation on Vehicle-to-Vehicle Communication Performance at Intersections

Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) communication is envisioned to enable a vast range of road safety, traffic efficiency and infotainment applications for next-generation vehicular traffic. In this paper, we investigate the effects of vegetation on the performance of V2V communication based on a 5.9GHz measurement campaign conducted at different urban and rural intersections with different types of vegetation under non-line-of-sight (NLOS) conditions. We evaluate received power levels and packet delivery rates under varying conditions with respect to vehicle positioning, intersection layout and vegetation type. To capture the additional signal attenuation caused by foliage, the measurements for each intersection were conducted both in summer and in winter, which allows comparing the impact of leaved and leafless vegetation. Moreover, we derive the additional attenuation caused by vegetation and compare the measurement results with three well-known empirical models for vegetation-induced path loss. Based on the acquired sets of measurement data, we present a simple parametrized model for estimation of path loss caused by vegetation in V2V scenarios.