Signal propagation modelling for vehicle-to-infrastructure communication under the influence of metal obstruction

Connected car has become one of emerging technology in the automotive industries today. This development preludes a rise in vehicular communication studies that primarily targets radio channel modelling on vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) communication mode. Considering vehicular obstruction, vast channel propagation studies have focused more on V2V mode while others consider the typical urban scenarios consisting of high traffic volumes of moving vehicles. Due to challenging propagation mechanisms and high complexity in such areas, radio propagation models applied in simulators assume an obstacle-free environment rather than considering the least effect imposed by metal obstruction on communication signal. Besides, there are limited studies pertaining to metal obstruction that considers several under-explored environments such as actual parking lots, junctions and other road infrastructure support. As such, this paper demonstrates signal attenuation analysis caused by the presence of metal objects in low density over obstacle-free environment on actual parking lot via V2I mode. Two scenarios such as LOS and NLOS conditions consisting of obstacle-free, cars and buses as static metal objects are evaluated. The aim of this research is to characterize signal strength caused by metal blockage on radio wave propagation predicated on the presence of vehicles as a subject of obstruction in comparison to obstacle-free vehicular environment. The validity of data is shown through received signal strength indicator (RSSI) and approximation analysis (RMSE) to demonstrate the efficiency of obtained measurements. The results demonstrated that Log-normal shadowing model yields the best fit to low-density metal obstruction scenario with smallest RMSE of 4.78 under bus obstruction whereas 5.72 under car obstruction.