Latency Analysis and Evaluation of C-V2X Communications Using the 5G Uu Interface

In recent years, 5G new radio (NR) has garnered significant attention for its low-latency capabilities. Leveraging 5G NR in the Internet of Vehicles (IoV), the Uu interface has shown potential to support low-latency cellular Vehicle-to-Everything (C-V2X) applications, which have traditionally been supported by the PC5 interface. To explore this potential, this article presents the design and implementation of two 5G simulation platforms. The first platform is a hardware-in-the-loop (HiL) simulation platform, which facilitates radio access network (RAN) latency testing of C-V2X communications using the Uu interface under both 5G conventional configuration (CC) and enhanced configuration (EC). This includes testing Vehicle-to-Network (V2N), Network-to-Vehicle (N2V), and Vehicle-to-Network-to-Vehicle (V2N2V) latency. To further investigate the latency performance of 5G V2N2V in congested scenarios, a second platform, the software (SW) simulation platform, is designed and implemented. The platform assesses the impact of packet configurations and spectrum resource configurations on the RAN latency of 5G V2N2V communication within the congested scenario configured in this article. Latency results from the HiL and SW simulation platforms demonstrate that by adjusting 5G network configurations, packet configurations, and spectrum resource configurations, V2N, N2V, and V2N2V latency can be reduced to less than 2, 3, and 11 ms, respectively.