Overview and prospect of communication-sensing-computing integration for autonomous driving in the internet of vehicles

To meet extreme performance requirements, such as extremely low communication delay, extremely high reliability, and a higher transmission rate, for autonomous driving in the Internet of vehicles (IoV), the future IoV should be merged into a united framework that integrates communication, sensing, and computing. At the same time, as the 5G-Advanced system moves toward supporting a broader toB vertical industry, it will face a more complex and heterogeneous user environment and multidimensional digital space, which requires 5G-Advanced terminals and 5G-Advanced networks to have stronger environmental sensing, computing, and intelligence capabilities. To realize deep integration for autonomous driving in the IoV, the sensing of IoV depends on not only radar positioning, camera imaging, and various sensor detections but also communication, which can collect a variety of data to the edge node for calculation. At the same time, with the support of cloud edge and end integration efficient computing power to achieve high-precision sensing and efficient communication, the integration network further improves collaborative mobile computing robustness. Therefore, the three functions of communication, sensing, and computing for autonomous driving in the IoV are interrelated and promote each other. To break through the architectural barrier of universal sensing integration in the Internet of autonomous vehicles, it is necessary to explore how to build a universal sensing integration network architecture with decoupled resources, scalable capabilities, and reconfigurable architecture, as well as universal sensing integration resource management technology. However, communication, sensing, and computing are separated from each other in the existing IoV. Thus, we scrutinize the scientific problem of the endogenous integration of communication, sensing, and computing for autonomous driving in the IoV. First, the current research progress in integrating communication, sensing, and computing is discussed. Second, communication-sensing-computing-integrated IoV is defined, and the research progress on communication-sensing-assisted computing, communication-computing-assisted sensing, and sensing-computing-assisted communication is discussed. Aiming at the scenario of an IoV for autonomous driving, the architecture of communication-sensing-computing-integrated IoV with five layers and four planes is proposed. The horizontal five layers from bottom to top are a multiple access layer, unified network layer, multi-domain resource layer, collaborative service layer, and management and application layer. The four vertical planes are communication, sensing, computing power, and intelligent integration planes, respectively. Deeply integrating the five layers and four planes further improves the performance of the integrated IoV. Third, key performance indexes for evaluating the integrated IoV are proposed. Finally, four feasible suggestions are given for the current research problems and the future development direction.