This white paper aims to comprehensively analyze and consolidate the state of the art in communication technologies supporting modern and future Information and Communication Technology (ICT). Its primary objective is to establish a common understanding of how communication solutions enable automation, safety, and efficiency across multiple transport domains, including railways, road vehicles, aircraft, and unmanned aerial vehicles. The document seeks to identify key communication requirements and technological enablers necessary for interoperable and reliable ITS operation. It also assesses the limitations of current systems and proposes pathways for integrating emerging technologies such as 5G, Sixth Generation (6G), and Artificial Intelligence (AI)-driven network control. The white paper also intends to support harmonization between different transport modes through a unified framework for communication modeling, testing, and standardization. It highlights the importance of accurate channel modeling and empirical validation to design efficient, robust, and scalable systems. Another objective is to explore the use of reconfigurable intelligent surfaces, integrated sensing and communication, and digital twin concepts within ITS. The document emphasizes the role of spectrum management and standardization efforts in ensuring interoperability among diverse communication systems. Finally, the paper seeks to stimulate collaboration among academia, industry, and standardization bodies to advance the design of resilient and adaptive communication infrastructures for future transportation systems.

In this letter, we investigate single-slope path loss models complemented with shadowing effects in the context of vehicular communications. We present several models obtained based on extensive measurement campaigns with inter-vehicle transmission conducted at 26.555 GHz in real-traffic experiments, mainly along high-speed roads. Particular attention has been put on the impact of aerial characteristics (omnidirectional versus directional), surrounding environment (e.g., urban versus rural), and their mounting point on cars (at the rooftop, on the bumper, and below the car chassis). Finally, the effect of signal ducting and of the number of blocking cars has been analyzed and the decorrelation time has been discussed.

Vehicle platooning is considered as one of the key use cases for vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communications. However, its benefits can be realized only with highly reliable wireless transmission. As the 5.9 GHz frequency band used for V2V suffers from high congestion, in this article, we consider the use of the terrestrial TV frequencies for intra-platoon communications. In order to be able to evaluate the potential of the new bands fully, propagation models for V2V communications at such frequencies are needed. Therefore, this article reports new V2V propagation measurements and their modeling results. In particular, we propose a double slope double shadowing model as the most accurate one, based on a comparison of various models using the Bayesian information criteria. We also investigate the space-time autocorrelation properties of shadowing, which turned out to be dependent on the speed of vehicles. The proposed path loss and shadowing model differs from the ones proposed for the 5.9 GHz band; mostly, in favor of the TV band, as shown by, e.g., no statistically significant impact of a blocking car.

This paper presents the physical layer of a proprietary broadband communication system for CubeSats. The system operates in the C band (5.8 GHz), delivering at least 10 Mbps of the net user throughput. Operation at low elevation angles (and therefore low SNRs) and high Doppler shifts is made possible thanks to a sophisticated synchronization subsystem. The system can be adapted to propagation conditions experienced during a given visibility window by changing the signal bandwidth and coding rate. It is implemented using Software Defined Radio (SDR) technology. The system will be used in two missions that are scheduled for 2023 and 2024 and are planned in cooperation with the National Technical University of Ukraine “Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute” and SatRev S.A.

In this paper, we propose a distributed Vehicular Dynamic Spectrum Access (VDSA) framework for vehicles operating in platoon formations. Given the potential for significant congestion in licensed frequency bands for vehicular applications such as 5.9 GHz. Our approach proposes to offload part of the intra-platoon data traffic to spectral white-spaces in order to enhance vehicular connectivity in support of on-road operations. To enable VDSA, a Bumblebee-based decision making process is employed which is based on the behavioral models of animals, is employed to provide a means of distributed transmission band selection. Simulation results show the distributed VDSA framework improves the leader packets reception ratio by 5%, thus indicating its potential to increase in reliability of intra-platoon communications.

High reliability of wireless communications is a rudimentary requirement for guaranteeing safe autonomous driving. This paper discusses the performance of communications between cars within autonomous platoons, with the application of a proposed database-supported successive interference cancellation (SIC) algorithm. By assumption, it utilizes the knowledge on other existing interfering transmissions (such as pre-entered information on digital television transmissions stored in the roadside database) to remove the interfering signal at the receiver side. It is shown that this approach improves the bit error rate, and in turn — the reliability of intra-platoon transmission. The proposed solution is evaluated using link-level extensive computer simulations.

Accurate modeling of wireless channels is very important in modern communication systems. The well-designed models may allow for efficient evaluation of various wireless setups in different scenarios. In this paper, we concentrate on characterizing the communications channel (path loss with shadowing) at 26.555 GHz between two cars driving on the high-speed route. The models have been prepared based on the conducted measurements where for the prospective antenna location, car bumpers have been selected.

In this paper, we consider the use of radio environment maps (REMs) in vehicular dynamic spectrum access (VDSA) for vehicle platooning applications. We propose an algorithm that dynamically allocates the frequency bands and transmission power in the so-called TV white spaces (TVWS) for intra-platoon messaging, intending to maximize the reliability of the communications, simultaneously keeping the interference to the primary system below the required threshold. The proposed solution is evaluated in simulations, with the results indicating a significant increase in communications reliability with VDSA.

This paper presents the improved distance estimation for the purpose of Database-assisted Autonomous Platooning and V2V channel modelling. The proposed approach combines commonly used GPS-based measurements with UWB-based measurements to benefit from both solutions. While GPS allow for unlimited measurement range, the UWB improves accuracy for short range. The paper is based on real-word measurements.

Platooning is considered to be one of the possible prospective implementations of the autonomous driving concept, where the train-of-cars moves together following the platoon leader’s commands. However, the practical realization of this scheme assumes the use of reliable communications between platoon members. In this paper, the results of the measurement experiment have been presented showing the impact of the blocking cars on the signal attenuation. The tests have been carried out for the high-frequency band, i.e. for 26.555 GHz. It has been observed that on one hand side, the attenuation can reach even tens of dB for 2 or 3 blocking cars, but in some locations, the impact of a two-ray propagation mitigates the presence of obstructing vehicles.

Professional applications of UAVs require fast and reliable communication for the streaming of data from a variety of sensors located on board, as well as for telemetry and control. In this paper we present a project of downlink and uplink high-speed communication which enables control and data reception in rapidly changing propagation conditions in urban outdoor-to-outdoor (LOS and NLOS) and outdoor-to-indoor scenarios. The selected solutions for modulation, channel coding, synchronization and SNR estimation resulting high-performance transmission. The design assumptions have been verified by simulations using carefully selected radio channel models. The proposed design has been implemented in software-defined radio technology using the limited resources of an FPGA and microcontroller board.

The paper considers the practical limitations of a cooperative adaptive cruise control algorithm for driving in a platoon of cars which communicate in conformance with the IEEE 802.11p standard. These limitations stem from the limited accuracy of sensors applied in vehicle control algorithms and from the maximum acceleration and deceleration of several classes of cars. The speed, acceleration, distance and relative speed sensors applied on board cars connected via wireless 802.11p communication links are considered. We show how these inaccuracies influence the overall platoon performance expressed in the form of an allowable physical distance between subsequent cars that ensures platoon stability and no car crashes. The sophisticated simulation package developed by the authors has been used in investigations which helped to determine the cases where limitations and inaccuracies substantially influence the platoon performance.

This paper introduces the Virtual Leader-Predecessor Following (VLPF) information flow topology to support communication between vehicles moving in a long platoon under the constant distance policy. The virtual leaders in the proposed VLPF architecture are spread across the platoon with specified density and act as local leaders for a certain number of cars following them. Such a topology ensures that distances between vehicles and their local leaders are small enough to guarantee reliable wireless communication, and thus enables much higher platoon lengths. At the same time, the proposed solution does not introduce any additional communication overhead or delays.

The paper is focused on presentation of the fully autonomous observation SkyLab laboratory which was established recently to support research in the field of astronomical instrumentation and surveillance-related surveys. This facility is operated by the Poznan University of Technology. The main purpose of this laboratory is to provide new hardware and software technologies for precise tracking of sidereal and non-sidereal targets using 0.5 to 1.0-m class telescopes. In particular, in this paper we take into account the robotized high-speed altazimuth mount equipped with direct-drive motors which was built specifically for the project. The mechanical design of the mount and the application of robust control algorithms make it possible to achieve high speed of operation and high tracking accuracy. We present experimental evaluation of the mount characteristics based of real observation scenarios concerning tracking of satellites on LEOs.

This paper investigates the ability of modified cooperative adaptive cruise control to support high-density car platooning. We first use a simplistic communication model to study the impact of actuation lag, message periodicity, and communication delay on the minimum feasible inter-car spacing. We then use a detailed IEEE 802.11p simulation model to evaluate platooning performance in realistic highway scenarios. Different highway traffic intensities are simulated to observe the impact of increasing contention on the wireless channel with two different transceiver configurations: a single-transceiver operating on the common safety channel and a dual-transceiver operating, simultaneously, on the common safety channel and a dedicated service channel.