Measurement-Based Performance Evaluation of SmartRSUs with Heterogeneous Antenna Architectures for V2X Communications
For engineers designing roadside units for V2X, this provides practical performance comparisons, but the work is incremental as it applies known measurement methods to specific hardware configurations.
This paper evaluates two SmartRSU designs with different antenna architectures for V2X communications, comparing integrated vs. external antennas. Results show trade-offs in coverage, RSSI, packet loss, and latency, providing insights for C-ITS deployment.
This paper presents a measurement-based performance evaluation of two custom Smart Roadside Units (SmartRSUs) featuring different V2X antenna architectures. The first configuration integrates GNSS and communication antennas into an all-in-one rooftop module, whereas the second uses external dual ITS-G5 (IEEE 802.11p) antennas operating at 5.9~GHz and a dedicated GNSS antenna. Both systems are built upon a proprietary On-Board Unit (OBU) platform adapted for infrastructure deployment. The experimental campaign evaluates key V2X communication metrics, including coverage, received signal strength indicator (RSSI), packet loss, and end-to-end latency in both transmission (OBU-to-infrastructure) and reception (infrastructure-to-OBU) directions. To ensure objective validation, a commercial off-the-shelf V2X Roadside Unit is co-located on the same infrastructure and used as a performance benchmark, providing ground-truth reference measurements under identical environmental conditions through a controlled co-located deployment. Results highlight the impact of antenna design and placement on communication reliability and latency, revealing trade-offs between integrated and external antenna configurations in real-world deployment scenarios. The findings provide practical insights for the design and optimization of next-generation SmartRSUs in cooperative intelligent transportation systems (C-ITS).