GUEST EDITORIAL
5G ENABLED VEHICULAR COMMUNICATIONS AND NETWORKING
Xiang Cheng Rongqing Zhang Shanzhi Chen
V ehicular communications and networking (VCN)
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opment not only possesses economic value, but also has
enormous social potential. The earliest vehicular network
started from the dedicated short range networks, such as
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of this century. In recent years, the public access network
based VCN has been rapidly advanced. For example,
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that, as the enabler of the modern era of the automobile
industry including electric vehicles, intelligent vehicles,
and shared vehicles, VCN will undergo unprecedented
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will be covered by China. At the same time, VCN is also
considered a cornerstone to effectively resolve various
traffic congestion and safety issues. As estimated by
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and fuel savings.
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ership team has also been established to coordinate the
development of the VCN industry. The leadership team
explicitly pointed out that, riding the historical wave of
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plication, improve transportation safety and efficiency,
and alleviate pollution. This is a critical step towards the
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Technically, however, the research and development
of VCN are still facing formidable challenges. This
is because the vehicular environments are inherently
very challenging due to the doubly selective and fast
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technologies cannot be directly employed in vehicular
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formance degradation. In addition, vehicles are often
constrained in computation, storage, and radio spectrum
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dented efforts and resultant outcomes. These are essential
in bringing the many demanding vehicular applications
to reality.
This Special Topic Issue contains a collection of
papers that provide theoretical advances and practical
experiments in terms of vehicular communications and
networking. We collected outstanding papers in this
Special Topic Issue to showcase recent research and
developments related to vehicular communications and
networking. We received a large number of manuscripts
in response to our call for papers. More importantly, we
are honored to receive contributions from the research
groups of several renowned VCN experts, including the
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low) from University of Waterloo, Canada, the NSFC
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of the automobile industry, facilitate new transportation
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 GUEST EDITORIAL

we have accepted nine papers for this Special Issue. The
accepted papers can be divided into three categories re
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vehicular communications and networking, namely ve
hicular channel modeling and measurements, physical
layer techniques, and MAC design and applications.
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is authored by Yuanyuan Ma et al. The authors derive a
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scattering model. The proposed channel model charac
terizes vehicular radio propagation channels with con
siderations of both base and mobile stations in motion,
which makes the angle of arrivals (AOAs) along with the
article, “Cooperative Vehicular Content Distribution in
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among mobile vehicles, which is a very challenging
issue due to the extremely large data volume, rapid to
pology change, and unbalanced traffic. Therefore, the
authors investigate content prefetching and distribution
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the rapid topology change and unbalanced traffic. The
content requests of vehicles can be served by neighbors,
which can improve the sharing efficiency and alleviate
the burden of networks. Moreover, the authors exploit
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authors analyze the statistical properties of the proposed
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tions. The channel model developed in this article for
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case.
And, we further introduce the two papers on physical
layer techniques for vehicular communications, both on
the channel estimation side.
The forth article, “Joint Channel Estimation and
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thored by Xuanfan Shen et al. The authors investigate the
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feature. Considering an OFDM system, the authors per
tribution by transforming it into a maximum weighted
independent set problem. Due the novelty and contribu
tions of this article, we recommend it as the cover article
of this Special Issue.
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vehicular channel modeling and measurements.
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the second article, “Deterministic and Stochastic Simula
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LVFRDXWKRUHGE\<LUDQ/Let al. The authors consider
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tion in conjunction with Iterative Detector and Decoder
(IDD) at the receiver to improve the estimation accuracy.
The EKF is proposed to jointly estimate the channel fre
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the estimation errors in EKF. Simulation results indicate
that, compared with traditional methods, the proposed
method effectively improves the system performance.
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ring model and a multiple confocal ellipses model. The
authors derive some expressions of the channel statistical
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Haibin Chen et al. The authors investigate the pilot de
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lope level crossing rate (LCR) and average fade duration VHTXHQFHVWKHDXWKRUVSURYLGHDQLQWHUIHUHQFHIUHHSLORW
(AFD). Moreover, the authors compare the statistical GHVLJQVFKHPHDQGDFRUUHVSRQGLQJWLPHGRPDLQ7'
properties of the reference model and the two simulation
models in different scenarios and investigate the impact
of different vehicular traffic densities (VTDs) on the
channel statistical properties of the proposed model.
On the vehicular MIMO channel modeling side,
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designed pilot symbols can be effectively eliminated.
Simulation results indicate that the accuracy of chan
nel estimation can be effectively improved by the pro
posed scheme, whose performance is close to that of the
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 GUEST EDITORIAL

QRQLQWHUIHUHQFHVLWXDWLRQ uations indicate that the proposed protocol outperforms

Finally, we give some brief introductions to the other
accepted articles that focus on MAC design and appli
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number of works contributing to vehicular networking
and applications. Hence, we select a total of six articles
regarding this area.
On the vehicular networking side, the sixth article,
related existing schemes in terms of packet delivery ratio
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On the content distribution side, the ninth article,
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&DFKLQJ´ LV DXWKRUHG E\ -LSLQJ -LDRet al. The emer
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³$0XOWLKRS0RYLQJ=RQH00=&OXVWHULQJ6FKHPH autonomous connected vehicle demands personalized
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et al7KH DXWKRUV SURSRVH D 0XOWLKRS 0RYLQJ =RQH vehicular content demand brings significant challenges
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ZLWK*33*FHOOXODUWHFKQRORJ\,Q00=YHKLFOHVDUH of massive content delivery, the authors propose a novel
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speed, distance and link life time. The main goal of
MMZ is to form stable clusters achieving high packet
delivery and low latency. Simulation results demonstrate
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the stability of MMZ in term of CH duration and change
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end latency are also improved as compared with existing
clustering schemes.
On the scheduling side, the seventh article, “Vehicular
Beacon Broadcast Scheduling based on Age of Informa
required by the mobile edge network to fulfill the task
of content delivery. Analytical and numerical results are
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These results reveal key insights into the fundamental
benefits of computing and caching in vehicular mobile
content delivery networks.
Last but not least, the editors would like to thank all
of the authors for their submissions to this Special Issue.
We are also grateful to the anonymous reviewers for their
timely responses and their valuable comments to improve
the quality of the articles. We hope that this Special Issue
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WLRQ$R,´LVDXWKRUHGE\<XDQ]KL1Let al. The authors
investigate the beacon broadcast scheduling problem
considering the Age of Information (AoI). The authors
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of AoI considering the limited communication resource
and vehicle mobility. Then the performance of the pro
posed algorithm is analyzed. With the proposed algo
rithm, the optimal solution can be obtained under certain
conditions.
On the routing side, the eighth article, “A Greedy
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and networking.
Biographies
Xiang Cheng, [IEEE SM’13] received the Ph.D. degree from Her-
iot-Watt University and the University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh,
U.K., in 2009, where he received the Postgraduate Research Thesis
Prize. He is currently a Professor at Peking University. His general
research interests are in areas of channel modeling and mobile
communications, subject on which he has published more than
160 journal and conference papers, 3 books and 6 patents. Dr.
7UDI¿F/LJKWDQG4XHXH$ZDUH5RXWLQJ3URWRFROIRU8U
EDQ9$1(7V´LVDXWKRUHGE\<DQJ\DQJ;LDet al. Rout
ing is a challenging problem in vehicular networks due
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PRELOLW\DWERWKHQGVRIWUDQVPLVVLRQ$QHI¿FLHQWURXW
ing protocol plays a vital role to achieve good network
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and queue aware routing protocol (GTLQR) which joint
ly considers the street connectivity, channel quality, rel
ative distance, and queuing delay to alleviate the packet
loss caused by vehicle clustering at the intersection and
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Young Researcher Award in 2015, the co-recipient for the 2016
IEEE JSAC Best Paper Award: Leonard G. Abraham Prize, the NSFC
2XWVWDQGLQJ<RXQJ,QYHVWLJDWRU$ZDUGWKH6HFRQG5DQN$ZDUG
in Natural Science, Ministry of Education in China, and received
the Best Paper Awards at IEEE ITST’12, ICCC’13, ITSC’14, ICC’16,
and ICNC’17. He has served as Symposium Leading-Chair, Co-
Chair, and a Member of the Technical Program Committee for
several international conferences. He is now an Associate Editor
for IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems.
Rongqing Zhang, [IEEE M’15] received the B.S. and Ph.D. degrees
from Peking University, Beijing, China, in 2009 and 2014, respec-
tively. Since 2014, he has been a post-doctoral research fellow at
v
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chapters and more than 70 papers in refereed journals and con-
ference proceedings. His current research interests include phys-
ical layer security, vehicular communications and networking,
and electric vehicles. Dr. Zhang was the recipient of the Academic
Award for Excellent Doctoral Students, Ministry of Education of
China, the co-recipient of the First-Class Natural Science Award,
Ministry of Education of China, and received the Best Paper
Awards at IEEE ITST 2012 and ICC 2016. He was also awarded as
International Presidential Fellow of Colorado State University in
2017. Currently, he serves as the Associate Editor of Complexity.
Shanzhi Chen, [IEEE SM’04] received the Bachelor and Ph.D. de-
gree from Xidian University, and Beijing University of Posts and
degree, and the Ph.D. degree both in electrical engineering from
the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, in 1997 and 2002, re-
spectively. She has been a faculty member in the School of Engi-
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Her research interests are in the areas of statistical learning and
signal processing with applications in radar, sensor fusion, com-
munications and biomedical imaging. Dr. Li has authored/co-au-
thored over 70 referred publications, including one book. Her
past and current researches are sponsored by NSF, NIH, General
Motors, Fiat Chrysler, and National Research Council. Dr. Li serves
as a member of technical committees of several international
conferences and workshops, and a regular reviewer of a number
of international journals. She is a senior member of IEEE.
7HOHFRPPXQLFDWLRQV%837&KLQDLQDQGUHVSHFWLYH-
ly. He joined Datang Telecom Technology & Industry Group and
CATT in 1994, and has served as EVP R&D since 2008, and the
director of State Key Laboratory of Wireless Mobile Communica-
tions, where he conducted research and standardization on 4G
TD-LTE and 5G. He has authored and co-authored four books
DPRQJ WKHP WKH WH[WERRN 0RELOLW\ 0DQDJHPHQW 3ULQFLSOH
Liuqing Yang, [IEEE F’15] received the Ph.D. degree from the Uni-
versity of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA, in 2004. Her main
research interests include communications and signal processing.
Dr. Yang has been actively serving the technical community, in-
cluding the organization of many IEEE international conferences,
and on the editorial boards of a number of journals, including
the IEEE Transactions on Communications, the IEEE Transactions
7HFKQRORJ\DQG$SSOLFDWLRQV6SULQJHU3UHVVERRNFKDSWHUV
approximately 100 journal papers, 50 conference papers, and
more than 50 patents in these areas. He has contributed to the
design, standardization, and development of 4G TD-LTE and 5G
mobile communication systems. Dr. Chen’s achievements have
won multiple top awards by China central government and hon-
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DQG7HFKQRORJLFDO3URJUHVV&KLQD7KLV*UDQG3UL]HLVWKH
highest category and in some years, it leaves with no winners
on Wireless Communications, the IEEE Transactions on Intelligent
Transportation Systems, and the IEEE Transactions on Signal Pro-
FHVVLQJ6KHUHFHLYHGWKH2඼FHRI1DYDO5HVHDUFK<RXQJ,QYHV-
tigator Program Award in 2007, the National Science Foundation
&DUHHU$ZDUGLQWKH,(((*/2%(&202XWVWDQGLQJ6HUYLFH
$ZDUG LQ  WKH *HRUJH 7 $EHOO 2XWVWDQGLQJ 0LG&DUHHU
)DFXOW\$ZDUGDQGWKH$UW&RUH\2XWVWDQGLQJ,QWHUQDWLRQDO&RQ-
tributions Award at CSU in 2012 and 2016 respectively, and Best
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Things Journal, the Editor of IEEE Network, and the guest editor
for IEEE Wireless Communications, IEEE Communications Maga-
zine and IEEE TVT, and served as TPC Chair and Member of many
international conferences. His current research interests include
5G mobile communications, network architectures, Vehicular
ICC’16, and WCSP’16.
Hongwei Zhang, [IEEE SM’13/ACM M’07] is an associate pro-
fessor of electrical and computer engineering at Iowa State Uni-
versity, U.S.A. His primary research interests lie in the modeling,
algorithmic, and systems issues in trustworthy wireless network-
FRPPXQLFDWLRQ1HWZRUNV,QWHUQHWRI7KLQJV,R7 ing for real-time cyber-physical-human systems such as those
in mixed-reality, agriculture, connected and automated vehicles,
Jia Li, received her B.S. degree in electronics and information smart grid, and industrial automation. He is a recipient of the
systems from Peking University, Beijing, China, in 1996, the M.S.E. 16)&$5((5$ZDUG85/KWWSZZZHFHLDVWDWHHGXaKRQJZHL

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