Abstract
To fulfill the requirements of future intelligent transportation system in 6G era, ultra-reliable and low-latency vehicular communications is of great importance. In high-mobility scenarios, the conventional orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) modulation may fail to work due to high Doppler spreads. Moreover, the dynamic network topology imposes challenges on aligning the beams in multiple antenna systems. In this context, this article introduces a new orthogonal time frequency space (OTFS) and sensing-assisted predictive beamforming framework for supporting reliable and low-latency vehicular communications. In particular, we will first overview the OTFS modulation scheme, which performs data transmission in the delay-Doppler (DD) domain and discuss its superiority in improving communication reliability in vehicular networks. Then the sensing-assisted predictive beamforming scheme will be introduced, which does not rely on dedicated pilots for beam pairing, leading to very low overhead and latency. Benefiting from the DD channel representation, we briefly discuss the potential of channel prediction. Lastly, the challenges and future research directions are summarized.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 56-62 |
| Number of pages | 7 |
| Journal | IEEE Wireless Communications |
| Volume | 30 |
| Issue number | 2 |
| Early online date | 18 Apr 2023 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - Apr 2023 |
| Externally published | Yes |
Funding
This work is supported in part by National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant 62101232, in part by the Guangdong Provincial Natural Science Foundation under Grant 2022A1515011257, and in part by the Shenzhen Science and Technology Program JCYJ20220530114412029.