In this paper we conduct a feasibility study of delay-critical safety applications over vehicular ad hoc networks based on the emerging dedicated short range communications (DSRC) standard. In particular, we quantify the bit error rate, throughput and latency associated with vehicle collision avoidance applications running on top of mobile ad hoc networks employing the physical and MAC layers of DSRC. Towards this objective, the study goes through two phases. First, we conduct a detailed simulation study of the DSRC physical layer in order to judge the link bit error rate performance under a wide variety of vehicles speeds and multi-path delay spreads. We observe that the physical layer is highly immune to large delay spreads that might arise in the highway environment whereas performance degrades considerably at high speeds in a multi-path environment. Second, we develop a simulation testbed for a DSRC vehicular ad hoc network executing vehicle collision avoidance applications in an attempt to gauge the level of support the DSRC standard provides for this type of applications. Initial results reveal that DSRC achieves promising latency performance, yet, the throughput performance needs further improvement.
Together, the Dedicated Short Range Communication (DSRC) and Vehicular Ad Hoc Network (VANET) technologies provide a unique opportunity to develop and introduce various types of communicationbased automotive technologies to the marketplace. To date, many applications have been identified by the automotive community. Given the large number and diverse nature of these applications, it is advantageous to develop a systematic classification methodology to facilitate future DSRC and VANET research. Toward this objective, in this paper, we present a study that goes through two major steps: characterisation and classification. First, we focus on a set of representative applications and characterise them with respect to plausible application-and networking-related attributes. The characterisation process not only strengthens our understanding of the applications but also sets the stage for the classification step since it reveals numerous application commonalities. Thus, we have categorised the given applications into seven generic classes, with the consideration of balancing the trade-off between exploiting as many application similarities as possible while preserving their salient differences. This is of paramount importance to facilitate performance analysis of newly designed protocols. Finally, we have identified key performance metrics for each class of applications, which, we hope, could bridge the gap between the automotive and wireless networking communities. Accordingly, the proposed classes are envisioned to play a dual-role: facilitate application simulation and performance evaluation and guide DSRC and VANET protocol research and development.
Keywords: VANET; DSRC.Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Bai, F., Krishnan, H., Elbatt, T. and Holland, G. (2012)
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