Interference Tests of ITS-G5 Vehicle-to-Vehicle Communication Networks with Virtual Drive Tests

Automotive communication systems have become a hot topic in the research field, especially with a focus towards connected vehicles. The potential of connected and automated driving promises an enormous increase of road safety and traffic efficiency. With this purpose, dedicated short range communication standards (e.g. ITS-G5) have been developed. These standards share spectral resources among all communication partners, which necessitates an evaluation of in-band interference. As one potentially powerful evaluation approach, the road and radio environment can be emulated instead of being accessed through field-operational tests, with major advantages like repeatability and convenience aspects. This paper describes a testing framework that employs a virtual-drive test approach for the evaluation of the performance of ITS-G5 equipment. According to the concept of virtual-drive testing, the road and radio environments have been emulated with regards to a real world drive track. Packet loss measurements are presented for the evaluation of interference effects present in the communication. The results indicate that the virtual-drive test approach is suitable for testing automotive communication systems.