Current Research Trends and Open Challenges for 6G-enabled Vehicle-to-Everything Networks
The commercial deployment of 5G communications has built a foundation for Vehicle-to-Everything (V2X) networks. The variety of communication links, e.g., Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V), Vehicle-to-Infrastructure (V2I), and Vehicle-to-Pedestrians (V2P), among others, potentially facilitate a significant improvement in efficiency and automation level for V2X. Based on 5G, 6G proposes a series of disruptive technologies and is ambitious to provide much enhanced communications performance. Focusing on the scenario of V2X, 6G will support intelligent and endogenous secure connections for vehicles, full integration of communication and sensing/positioning, AI and big data-aided network slicing, and air-space-ground integrated architecture, among others. Overall, the new technologies and refined key performance indicators (KPIs) of 6G are expected to pave the way for V2X applications and services.
We are very happy to have a few leading researchers in this research area, namely José Rodríguez-Piñeiro (Tongji University), Zhongxiang Wei (Tongji University), Jingjing Wang (Beihang University), Carlos A. Gutiérrez (Universidad Autónoma de San Luis Potosí), and Luis M. Correia (University of Lisbon), to publish a special issue in our journal, IEEE Open Journal of Vehicular Technology, that aims to bring together several of the most relevant technological enablers for 6G’s V2X, and encourages further research in this field.
This special issue features five articles on the relevant technological enables for 6G’s V2X:
a) Cooperative Multi-UAV Networks: A multi-UAV framework for collaboratively performing energy detection for a set of ground targets is proposed. Read More
b) Aerial Edge Computing-enabled V2X: Uses Aerial Vehicles as edge computing nodes, enabling road vehicles to offload their data in a non-orthogonal multiple access manner. Read More
c) Federated Learning-enabled V2X: Introduces a novel heterogeneous federated learning framework designed to tackle data heterogeneity and semantic inconsistency in V2X environments. Read More
d) Integrated Sensing and Communications (ISAC) for V2X Applications: An ISAC-based vehicle localization system combining millimeter-wave radar with RFID strategies is proposed, eliminating the need for additional tag readers. Read More
e) 6G-enabled V2X Networks: Review on the current status and future trends of the main technological enablers of 6G V2X, including V2X standardization, Non-Terrestrial Networks, Ultra Reliable Low Latency Communications, AI, ISAC and propagation channel modeling. Read More