Modeling Vehicle-to-Vehicle Line of Sight Channels and its Impact on Application-Level Performance Metrics

We analyze the properties of line of sight (LOS) channels in vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communication. We use V2V measurements performed in open space, highway, suburban, and urban environments. By separating LOS from non-LOS data, we show that a two-ray ground reflection path loss model with effective reflection coefficient range fits the LOS channels better than the frequently used free space path loss model. Two-ray model is a better fit not only in open space, but also in highway, suburban, and urban environments. We investigate the impact of using the modified two-ray model on the application-level performance metrics: packet delivery rate, throughput, latency, and jitter. Our results show that considerable differences arise in application performance when using two-ray and free space channel models. For this reason, we advocate the use of the two-ray ground model with an appropriately chosen effective reflection coefficient range.