Vittorio Todisco, Mattia Andreani, Maria Luisa Merani et al.
Collective perception messages (CPMs) introduce significant packet size variability due to dynamic object inclusion and periodic security overhead. While 5G NR-V2X Mode 2 typically employs semi-persistent scheduling (SPS) designed for periodic traffic with relatively stable packet sizes, the impact of realistic CPM-driven size fluctuations on distributed resource allocation remains insufficiently understood. This paper presents a comparative system-level evaluation of NR-V2X Mode 2 scheduling strategies under variable-size CPM traffic reconstructed from real-world perception datasets. We analyze dynamic scheduling and multiple SPS-based approaches, including padding-based allocation, aggressive size-driven reselection, and modulation and coding scheme (MCS) adaptation. Results show that packet size variability can significantly degrade reliability when scheduling stability is compromised. In particular, dynamic scheduling and aggressive reselection increase collision probability due to frequent resource reallocations. In contrast, SPS with padding converges to a stable resource allocation and provides robust performance, while MCS adaptation achieves the highest average packet reception ratio but with uneven reliability across packet types. The findings demonstrate that, under realistic CPM traffic, stability of resource usage is more critical than instantaneous load optimization, and provide design guidelines for CPS deployment over NR-V2X Mode 2.