Breaking the Blockage for Big Data Transmission: Gigabit Road Communication in Autonomous Vehicles

Recently, the spectrum band beyond 60 GHz has attracted attention with the growth of traffic demand. Previous studies assumed that these bands are not suitable for vehicle communications due to the short range and high rate of blockage. However, it also means that there is no existing service or regulation designed for these bands, which makes this area free to apply. Therefore, in this article, we draw a potential map of THz vehicle transmission for autonomous vehicles to break the blockage of short-range and unstable links. First, we give a brief overview of possible waveforms followed by the specific channel at 0.1-1 THz. Then we propose an autonomous relay algorithm called ATLR for the gigabit-level communication in the high-speed road environment. Finally, we discuss how the THz transmission helps relieve the interference problem and provide extra data to support various instructions in autonomous vehicles.