Wireless LAN performance under varied stress conditions in vehicular traffic scenarios

Abstract

Mobile ad-hoc networking with wireless LAN infrastructure can be employed to build inter-vehicle communication based applications. The associated high velocities and hostile driving environments pose a challenge to the performance of a wireless LAN. This paper assesses the performance of a wireless Local Area Network in different vehicular traffic and mobility scenarios. The network throughput and the quality of the wireless communication channel, measured on IEEE 802.11b compliant equipment, are observed to degrade with increasingly stressful communication scenarios. The test scenarios are varied by conducting the experiments under different vehicular mobility, peer-distance and driving environment conditions. We present results that can facilitate development of efficient applications for inter-vehicular communication. We also suggest optimization measures through aggression control via variations in packet size. Keywords-Local Area Network, IEEE 802.11b, aggression control. I.INTRODUCTION Inter-vehicle communication can be used to facilitate applications [8,9] improving driving safety and convenience. Potential uses of such applications are dynamic traffic routing, driver assistance and navigation, entertainment, co-operative driving and platooning [4], etc. Multimedia devices supporting communication and entertainment are already being deployed in vehicles. The existing ad-hoc networking infrastructure can be leveraged and performance enhancement measures can be innovated for provisioning seamless inter-vehicle communication. As opposed to a centralized service, an adhoc network is much better suited for vehicle-related applications that exchange data having local relevance. Intervehicle communication support by 3G networks has been discussed in literature [3]. However, in a centralized network topology, the information has to propagate from a vehicle to a central base station and back from the base station to another vehicle. The centralized architecture is hence not very efficient for applications that distribute data only between groups of vehicles that are spatially close to each other. An adhoc network can instead be employed between vehicles to help dispense traffic-related information, emergency warning in case of accidents, etc.

AMOEBA: Robust Location Privacy Scheme for VANET

“…1. Further, since vehicles exhibit large variability in speed by assuming maximum as well as minimum speeds during mobility, the VANET connectivity can be intermittent, with the mobile communication link quality degrading significantly with inter-vehicular distance [4].…”

“…(3) A group of navigating vehicles within a distance r 0 /2, where r 0 is vehicle transmission range, are geophysically proximate and can maintain full connectivity, and the group communication does not suffer any significant signal degradation. For instance, given that r 0 = 300 m is a typical value [1], it is shown in [4] that signal-tonoise ratio (SNR) for mobile communication between vehicles within a distance of 150 m on a freeway is adequate to provide reliable communication. Based on the above observations, we propose to enable vehicles to form a group during navigation.…”

“…ensuring the safety rendered by the V2V communications tests the VANET connectivity [4] and the authenticity and integrity of the communications [8]. On the other hand, the unique requirement of maintaining the liability of vehicles when accidents occur, necessitates that vehicles be identifiable at any given time, hence giving rise to privacy concerns [6].…”

Design, Implementation, and Test of a Wireless Peer-to-Peer Network for Roadway Incident Exchange

“…In contrast, Singh (Singh et al 2002) conducted several field tests and concluded that 802.11b performance is "suitable for intervehicle communications." These papers are not in conflict, but rather interpret "suitability" in different ways.…”

Resource Discovery Using Spatio-temporal Information in Mobile Ad-Hoc Networks

“…The probability is referred to as the reception probability. We adopt the empirical results of [5] to determine the reception probability. Specifically, given the relative speed s, the ratio between the 802.11b throughput under s and that under relative speed 0 is obtained from [5].…”