Paper on channel bonding in V2X networks accepted for IEEE ACCESS

The paper “A Study of Channel Bonding in IEEE 802.11bd Networks” by Viktor Torgunakov, Vyacheslav Loginov, and Evgeny Khorov is accepted at Q1 journal IEEE ACCESS. A channel bonding technique has been specified recently in a vehicular communication standard, and the paper investigates the influence of these techniques on the transmission latency and reliability. Now, paper is available in the early access. You can also see a related talk by one of the authors Viktor Torgunakov on the official IITP YouTube channel.

Nowadays, Vehicle-To-Everything (V2X) applications are actively developing, and their Quality of Service (QoS) requirements are becoming stricter. To support V2X applications, IEEE developed the IEEE 802.11p standard in 2010. However, systems based on this standard fail to fulfill requirements on very low frame transmission delay and packet loss ratio imposed by modern V2X applications, such as applications for autonomous driving and platooning. To satisfy stringent requirements, IEEE has launched a new IEEE 802.11bd project to design the next generation of IEEE 802.11p. An important feature of IEEE 802.11bd is the channel bonding technique, which allows transmitting data in two adjacent channels simultaneously. Thus, it increases data rates and may reduce delays and packet loss ratio. The current version of IEEE 802.11bd specifies two channel bonding techniques, which differ from that used in modern Wi-Fi networks. Moreover, the IEEE 802.11bd standard does not specify which channel bonding technique shall be used. Thus, it raises the task of selecting the most suitable channel bonding technique depending on the state of a device.

The paper evaluates the performance of the three aforementioned techniques from the IEEE 802.11 family of standards considering frame transmission delays and packet loss ratio. With rigorous simulations, it is shown that, in most cases, the channel bonding techniques highly decrease the percentage of both IEEE 802.11bd and legacy stations with unsatisfied QoS requirements on delays and packet loss ratio. Unfortunately, sometimes, the IEEE 802.11bd channel bonding techniques significantly worsen performance. Moreover, the work highlights that the choice of the primary channel for channel bonding techniques significantly affects the network performance. Furthermore, the work also shows that the increase of the contention window size can significantly enhance the performance of channel bonding techniques. As a result, the paper provides a recommendation for selecting both the most suitable channel access method and primary channel.

The paper is accepted in IEEE ACCESS, a first quartile (Q1) journal. IEEE Access is an open-access journal, a multidisciplinary, all-electronic archival journal, continuously presenting the results of original research or development across all IEEE’s fields of interest. Thе journal has won numerous awards, and its articles are in IEEE Xplore’s Most Popular downloads every month.