A Self-Organizing MAC Protocol for DSRC based Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks

This paper presents a novel medium access control protocol for inter-vehicular wireless networking using the emerging dedicated short range communication (DSRC) standards. The main contribution of the paper is the design of a self-configuring TDMA protocol capable of inter-vehicle message delivery with short and deterministic delay bounds. A novel feature of VeSOMAC is its in-band control mechanism for exchanging TDMA slot information during distributed MAC scheduling. It is shown that by avoiding explicit timing information exchange, VeSOMAC can work without inter- vehicle time synchronization. The in-band control mechanism is also used for fast protocol convergence during initial network setup and topology changes due to vehicle movements. A simulation model has been developed for comparing VeSOMAC's performance with that of DSRC- recommended 802.11 MAC for traffic safety applications.