The development of future railway systems is contingent on the evolution of wireless communications technologies and their ability to serve more sophisticated use cases. Recent proposals to extend the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) 4G or 5G standard for use in next-generation railway wireless communications presents a problem in that they are still based on Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM), which is vulnerable to Doppler-related effects when traveling at high speed. Orthogonal Time Frequency Space (OTFS) is a promising new modulation technique that can handle communication even in very high vehicle speed cases. In this paper, we investigate the performance of OTFS in terms of achievable rate under different High Speed Rail (HSR) environments, while taking into account the impact of practical but non-biorthogonal pulse shapes. Simulation results show that OTFS provides consistently high achievable rates regardless of the environment, and that the rates are relatively insensitive to the speed of travel.

Vehicular communications hold the promise of disrupting mobility services and supporting the mass adoption of future autonomous vehicles. Regulators have set aside specific spectrum at the 5.9 GHz band to support Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) safety applications, for which a world-wide adoption of a standardized radio technology is a key factor to deliver on this promise. Two technologies are currently positioned to begin its commercial path, IEEE 802.11p and LTE-PC5 Mode-4. The main differences between these technologies lie on the design of their channel access mechanisms. This paper provides an analysis of the impact that the Medium Access Control (MAC) mechanisms included in 802.11p and LTE-PC5 Mode-4 will have on the performance of the applications using the Cooperative Awareness Service, applying two new application-level metrics used by safety applications: Neighborhood Awareness Ratio and Position Error. We have found that, even with an equivalent physical layer performance, the MAC layer of LTE-PC5 Mode-4 will mostly outperform the MAC layer of IEEE 802.11p (or its not yet ready enhanced version 802.11bd). However, IEEE 802.11p/bd results in slightly better vehicle positioning accuracy at lower distances.