Spatial-Interference Aware Cooperative Resource Allocation for 5G NR Sidelink Communications

Distributed resource allocation (RA) schemes have been introduced in cellular vehicle-to-everything (C-V2X) standard for vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) sidelink (SL) communications to share the limited spectrum (sub-6GHz) efficiently. However, the recent progress in connected and automated vehicles and mobility services requires a huge amount of available spectrum resources. Therefore, millimeter-wave and sub-THz frequencies are being considered as they offer a large free bandwidth. However, they require beamforming techniques to compensate for the higher path loss attenuation. The current fifth-generation (5G) RA standard for SL communication is inherited from the previous C-V2X standard, which is not suited for beam-based communication since it does not explore the spatial dimension. In this context, we propose a novel RA scheme that addresses the directional component by adding this third spatial dimension to the bandwidth part structure and promotes cooperation between vehicles in resource selection, namely cooperative three-dimensional RA. Numerical results show an average of 10% improvement in packet delivery ratio, an average 50% decrease in collision probability, and a 30% better channel busy ratio compared to the current standard, thus, confirming the validity of the proposed method.