Beaconing in a highway scenario: Vulnerable vehicles problem

Periodic exchange of short status messages using IEEE 802.11p also referred to as beaconing is a core inter-vehicle communication mode enabling novel cooperative safety applications. A beaconing in the platoon of vehicles moving on a highway is studied as one of the popular practical scenarios. This paper demonstrates that when the inter-arrival times of beacons are small and under certain medium access control protocol parameters, some vehicles in the platoon may suffer from serious performance degradation. The condition when such situation takes place is studied and recommendations are given on a proper choice of IEEE 802.11p parameters.