Performance analysis of IEEE 802.11e HCCA for V2I communications in WAVE networks

In this paper, a centralized polling-based medium access (MAC) scheme, namely, the IEEE 802.11e hybrid coordinator function (HCF) controlled channel access (HCCA), is considered as an alternative to the current MAC protocol used in IEEE 802.11p for Wireless Access in Vehicular Environment (WAVE). At first, the limitations of the current enhanced distributed channel access (EDCA) are examined, and then a simple analytical performance evaluation of HCCA is provided. The results demonstrate that the HCCA scheme can be an alternative option to EDCA and could serve as an efficient channel access mechanism for vehicular communications.