SS-MAC: A Novel Time Slot-Sharing MAC for Safety Messages Broadcasting in VANETs

Efficient and scalable media access control (MAC) protocol design is crucial to guarantee the reliable broadcast of safety messages in vehicular ad hoc networks. To devise a MAC for safety message broadcasting with reliability and minimum delay, in this paper, we propose a novel time slot-sharing MAC, referred to as SS-MAC, which can support diverse periodical broadcasting rates. In specific, we first introduce a circular recording queue to online perceive time slot occupying status. We then design a distributed time slot sharing (DTSS) algorithm and random index first fit (RIFF) algorithm, to efficiently share the time slot and make the online vehicle-slot matching, respectively. We prove theoretically the efficacy of DTSS algorithm, and evaluate the efficiency of RIFF algorithm by using MATLAB simulations. Finally, we conduct extensive simulations considering various driving scenarios and resource conditions to demonstrate the SS-MAC performance.