Spectrum Management: The Case of 5G‐Based NG‐ETC in Japan

ABSTRACT The pervasive wireless network facilitates connectivity across a wide range of devices and extends its applications to both vertical and horizontal industries in future smart cities. The intelligent transportation system (ITS) capitalizes on this connectivity to enhance the capabilities and diversity of interactions among vehicles, networks, infrastructure, and pedestrians. Although the architectures and use cases for smart cities and vehicle‐to‐everything (V2X) have been extensively discussed, the coexistence of rapidly growing numbers of devices within overlapping spectrum bands presents a novel challenge. This study analyzes and evaluates current electronic toll collection (ETC) systems from a spectrum management perspective and aims to propose a spectrum‐manageable ETC system capable of providing long‐range coverage, resisting interference, and reliable availability, ensuring signal quality for sufficient throughput by using emerging wireless system through a spectrum management approach. It leverages the advanced features of fifth‐generation (5G) technology, including bandwidth part (BWP), millimeter wave, beamforming, and beam ID, to predict the impact of potential harmful interference caused by a vast number of devices, using the Monte Carlo statistical methodology. Moreover, the prediction results, combined with additional protection criteria, are used to design a modern ETC system that performs BWP switching based on interference. The results demonstrate that the proposed approach is resistant to interference and meets the requirements of use cases in the next generation of ITSs.