Title: An empirical study of reliable networking for vehicular networks using IEEE 802.11n

Authors: Seungbae Lee; Alvin Lim; Qing Yang

Addresses: Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering, 3101 Shelby Center for Engineering Technology, Auburn University, Auburn, AL 36849-5347, USA ' Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering, 3101 Shelby Center for Engineering Technology, Auburn University, Auburn, AL 36849-5347, USA ' Department of Computer Science, Montana State University, 360 EPS Building, Bozeman, MT 59717, USA

Abstract: The IEEE 802.11n technology is becoming more and more prevalent in wireless networks due to its significant enhancements in network performance. To examine whether the reliability of 802.11n is sufficient for vehicular networks, we conducted extensive experiments on inter-vehicle and intra-vehicle communications in vehicular environments. From this empirical study, we found that 802.11n provides high performance with stable throughput and reliable coverage in most cases. However, 802.11n protocols do not detect frequent changes of propagation and polarisation due to vehicle mobility and its rate adaptation algorithms improperly select multi-stream rates under channel fading conditions, although single-stream rates perform better. Moreover, an optimal antenna alignment that enables High Throughput (HT) operation using parallel data streams needs further investigation in vehicular environments. Our findings have profound implications on the protocol design and appropriate configuration for reliable networking in vehicular networks using 802.11n.

Keywords: vehicular networks; vehicular communications; network performance; network reliability; IEEE 802.11n; MIMO; spatial stream; rate adaptation; MCS; antenna alignment; wireless networks; propagation; polarisation; vehicle mobility; rate adaptation algorithms; channel fading; protocol design; network configuration.

DOI: 10.1504/IJVAS.2014.060060

International Journal of Vehicle Autonomous Systems, 2014 Vol.12 No.2, pp.141 - 157

Received: 20 Sep 2011
Accepted: 19 May 2012
Published online: 27 Oct 2014 *

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