MCS Adaptation within the Cellular V2X Sidelink

Adaptation of the Modulation and Coding Scheme (MCS) within the Cellular Vehicle-To-Everything (C-V2X) sidelink has the potential for a wide range of applications including congestion control, support of variable packet sizes, density aware rate adaptation and improved support of unicast transmissions. However, the practical implementation of MCS adaptation presents a wide range of implications for the C-V2X radio resources, bandwidth, computation of power levels and operation of the scheduling mechanism. This paper presents the first study that provides a detailed analysis and an implemented model highlighting the implications of MCS adaptation on the operation of the Sensing-Based Semi-Persistent Scheduling (SB-SPS) mechanism within the C-V2X sidelink. To showcase the use of MCS adaptation for a particular purpose, a detailed analysis of its performance for distributed congestion control is undertaken, while considering different vehicular densities. The results indicate that MCS adaptation can be useful to reduce channel congestion by decreasing resource occupation but may not improve the overall packet delivery rate unless subchannel occupation is reduced. Finally, this study provides the foundation for other applications of MCS adaptation within the C-V2X sidelink.