Resource Allocation for Open-Loop Ultra-Reliable and Low-Latency Uplink Communications in Vehicular Networks

To support ultra-reliable and low-latency communication (URLLC) in vehicular networks, the virtual cells, where multiple access points (APs) cooperatively serve one mobile node, have been proposed to reduce the end-to-end latency in the downlink. The latency can be further reduced by eliminating the need for retransmission and feedback control, i.e., open-loop communications. However, it is difficult to achieve a high reliability of the uplink via virtual cells, because of multiple access interference and collisions from other virtual cells nearby. In this paper, we formulate the proactive radio resource allocation in the open-loop uplink of vehicular networks as a stochastic optimization problem with the objective to maximize the uplink reliability while ensuring the network stability. The optimal resource allocation policies are obtained solving the optimization problem using the Lyapunov optimization technique in a distributed manner. To reduce the computational and to improve the challenges of the Lyapunov optimization, we propose a virtual resource slicing algorithm that maps radio resource units to virtual resource blocks. Simulation results exhibit that both ultra-low latency and ultra high reliability are guaranteed in the open-loop uplink of vehicular networks. Based on the theoretical performance analysis and simulations, the uplink radio access procedure is summarized for the URLLC in vehicular networks.