Medium access control based on a Non Cooperative Cognitive Radio for platooning communications

The emergence of Intelligent Transport Systems has led to the development of a specific communications standard carried out by the IEEE: Wireless Access in Vehicular Environments (WAVE). However, this standard does not address certain critical security and real time application constraints, such as the platooning guidance of transport units. This paper presents an original proposal of medium access control protocol based on Non Cooperative Cognitive Radio techniques to obtain a mechanism which complies with the requirements of real time communications. The mechanism also offers other advantages, such as avoiding signalling and the capacity to adapt to channel conditions. The solution is applied to the problem of units merging a convoy. Comparison results between the proposal and Slotted-Aloha are included.