Local End-to-End Paths for Low Latency Vehicular Communication

Automated Driving is expected to contribute to various factors that affect our daily life, while bringing new business and technological challenges for various stakeholders involved. The 5G cellular networks need to be redesigned by optimizing time consuming functions both at the control and the user plane to support the demanding performance requirements that automated driving sets for the communication layer. This paper proposes the evolution of the Radio Access Network, taking into account the localised nature of the vehicular traffic. The concept of local end-to-end data paths over the cellular (Uu) interface is described, while new methods and signaling are introduced at the base station by avoiding the involvement of core network entities. The end-to-end latency for the exchange of data traffic among vehicles is reduced by 45% for unicast communication and 52% for multicast communication due to the proposed localized cellular communication. A substantial reduction of the control plane latency, for radio bearers' establishment and radio paths' formation, in the order of 22.5 ms is also achieved.