Modeling and Evaluation of LTE in Intelligent Transportation Systems

The term Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) refers to adding information and communications technology to transport infrastructure and ve- hicles. The IEEE 802.11p standard is considered the main candidate for com- munication within the context of ITS and it performs well for active safety use cases thanks to its very low delay. Nonetheless, there are still some problems that originate mostly from the decentralized ad-hoc nature of the protocol, that lead us to believe that the information exchange in ITS can also be handled via a different kind of network. In this paper, the technical feasibility of the use of LTE for ITS communication is examined. A model was built simulating the function of the LTE evolved Radio Access Network (eRAN) operating in a ve- hicular environment and its performance is evaluated. The results are encourag- ing and indicate that LTE can be used to handle certain types of traffic in a ve- hicular network.