IEEE 802.11p: Towards an International Standard for Wireless Access in Vehicular Environments

Vehicular environments impose a set of new requirements on today's wireless communication systems. Vehicular safety communications applications cannot tolerate long connection establishment delays before being enabled to communicate with other vehicles encountered on the road. Similarly, non-safety applications also demand efficient connection setup with roadside stations providing services (e.g. digital map update) because of the limited time it takes for a car to drive through the coverage area. Additionally, the rapidly moving vehicles and complex roadway environment present challenges at the PHY level. The IEEE 802.11 standard body is currently working on a new amendment, IEEE 802.1 lp, to address these concerns. This document is named wireless access in vehicular environment, also known as WAVE. As of writing, the draft document for IEEE 802.11p is making progress and moving closer towards acceptance by the general IEEE 802.11 working group. It is projected to pass letter ballot in the first half of 2008. This paper provides an overview of the latest draft proposed for IEEE 802.11p. It is intended to provide an insight into the reasoning and approaches behind the document.