A Novel Capture-Aware TDMA-Based MAC Protocol for Safety Messages Broadcast in Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks

Since broadcast communication is considered the highly appropriate technique for the dissemination of safety messages in vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs), it is vital to design a high-efficient medium access control (MAC) protocol for vehicles accessing wireless channel. However, the characteristics of VANETs, such as high-velocity vehicles, highly dynamic topology and very unstable communication link, lower the performance of existing MAC protocols. In this paper, we propose a novel Capture-aware TDMA-based MAC (CT-MAC) protocol, which can better utilize the channel resource than the existing MAC protocols by setting the optimal frame length with taking capture effect into account. To obtain the realistically optimal frame length, the closed form expression of probability of capture effect is derived under Nakagami-m fading channel which is proper to model the small-scale fading channel in VANETs. Besides, a discrete Markov chain is introduced to analyze the impact of capture effect on channel utilization. The theoretical analyses and the simulation results show that the reliability of broadcast and the efficiency of channel utilization are significantly improved.