TDMA-based MAC Protocol for Implementation of Ultra-low latency in Vehicular networks

Abstract

In mission-critical applications such as vehicular networks, distributed robotics, and other cyber-physical systems, the requirements for latency are more stringent than traditional applications. Among them, autonomous V2V communication is a rapidly emerging domain of applications with a few milliseconds' latency requirements. Today's systems utilizing 802.11p or LTE-direct standards are not primarily designed for ultra-low latency. Because the medium access function contributes to a significant portion of the total latency, it is necessary to modify Layer2 in order to solve the problem. Focusing on MAC layer, we developed a scalable and latency-guaranteed MAC by devising Autonomous TDMA (ATDMA) in which autonomous joining/leaving is allowed without scheduling by coordinator. We also evaluated the performance of the algorithm by comparing with the WAVE protocol.