Capacity Evaluation of Measured Vehicle-to-Vehicle Radio Channels at 5.2 GHz

Reliability in Ricean multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) channels is crucial for safety-related vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) applications. In Ricean channels, there is a signal-to-noise ratio-dependent critical data rate below which signaling with zero outage is possible. The link will be more reliable the higher this critical data rate is. We present results of spectral efficiency and outage probability from channel sounder measurements of V2V MIMO radio channels in the 5.2 GHz band. Our results show that MIMO channels with higher spatial correlation lead to lower ergodic capacity and a reduced critical data rate. However, for fixed output power the temporal evolution of the ergodic capacity and critical data rate shows that the channel with the strongest line of sight (LoS) component also has the highest capacity.