UE Cooperation between Vehicle UE and In-Vehicle UE for 5G/6G Connected Vehicles

In this paper, we study the cooperation between a connected vehicle user equipment (UE) and a handset UE within the connected vehicle. Specifically, we investigate how a vehicle UE can assist the performance of a handset UE inside the vehicle. We propose to use the vehicle UE as an alternative link for the handset UE inside the vehicle, thus taking advantage of the vehicle UE's externally mounted antenna to eliminate vehicle penetration loss to the handset UE. We demonstrate dynamic switching between the vehicle UE link and the handset UE link is the simplest solution, and the solution achieving significant performance gain. A switching algorithm is designed to improve handset UE coverage when inside the vehicle, while placing no additional requirements on the cellular communication architecture or specifications. The performance of the switching algorithm is prototyped and verified through extensive test drives.