RV-CSMA/CA: Relative velocity-CSMA/CA mechanism for inter-vehicle network

Abstract

The relative velocity between vehicles plays an important role in inter-vehicle network that has to support high mobility. The communication efficiency of the network is affected considerably by a rapid change of network topology depending on the relative velocity. A novel MAC scheme, RV-CSMA/CA (Relative Velocity-Carrier Sense Multiple Access with Collision Avoidance) is proposed in this paper. The MAC scheme can improve the efficiency, as compared to that of using the standard CSMA/CA of IEEE 802.11 MAC. The principal protocol of the MAC scheme is to update the RTS (Request To Send) threshold as a function of the relative velocity and the length of the data frames. The updated threshold is used to determine the MAC multiple-access mechanism. Simulation results using a Qualnet network simulator show that the proposed protocol exhibits superior performance to the extant protocol in inter-vehicle network. © 2008 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.