Adjacent Channel Interference and Congestion Control for Multi-Channel Operation in Vehicular Networks

ETSI has considered a new set of services for the Release 2, which cannot be implemented using the single control channel. Therefore, it is necessary to regulate the operation of applications on multiple channels, what is called Multi-Channel Operation (MCO). In this case the interference from the first adjacent channel is not negligible and is recommended to manage it by congestion control mechanisms. We propose an elastic channel usage scheme for MCO, based on an optimal scheduler whose goal is to maximize the traffic on the channels while minimizing the adjacent channel interference generated by that load and controlling the congestion. We formulate the interference and congestion control as a constrained convex optimization problem and derive as solution a distributed algorithm called MINOS (MultI-chaNnel operation Optimal Scheduler). MINOS seamlessly work when vehicles have a different number of network interfaces available, and constraints and priorities can be set individually and dynamically, which provides flexibility to implement more sophisticated services on top of the framework. Our results show that MINOS effectively controls the congestion and reduces the interference, achieving an increased packet reception ratio across all channels and a higher allocated traffic, compared to other proposals.