Broadcasting Performance Comparison Among IVC MAC Protocol Candidates

Inter-vehicle communication (IVC) is essential for any intelligent transportation system implementation. In North America, dedicated short range communication (DSRC) protocol based on carrier sense multiple access with collision avoidance (CSMA/CA) was proposed. At the same time, in Europe, IVC implementation is based on R-ALOHA medium access protocol. In this paper we conduct a performance comparison between CSMA/CA and R-ALOHA protocols in a mobile environment while vehicles broadcast their messages. Computer simulation is used to obtain performance parameters such as delay, throughput, and packet delivery ratio. The results reveal that while the delay performance of both protocols is acceptable, the system throughput of CSMA/CA performs worse when being compared to R-ALOHA. Packet delivery ratio characteristics are also shown through simulation.