Addressing Outdoor Throughput Sensitivity for Mobile Vehicles by Enhancing the VMESH MAC Protocol

Abstract

To provide safe and efficient transportation, Vehicular Ad-Hoc Networks (VANETs) allow for the communication between a vehicle to another vehicle and for the communication between vehicles and stations near the road. As autonomous vehicles become closer to commercializing, the ability for moving vehicles to quickly and successfully send and receive packets becomes increasingly important. In this thesis, the 802.11p WAVE MAC protocol which was created specifically to address Vehicular Ad-Hoc Networks (VANETs), was analyzed. After reviewing existing models used to enhance throughput, the VMESH protocol was found to be better than the legacy WAVE MAC protocol. However, the VMESH protocol's channel allocation contention resolving scheme leads to a decreased throughput. This thesis proposes a new channel allocation scheme, Linear Modulus Autonomous Ordering (LMAO), that allows maximum channel utilization and therefore, an increased throughput. Given the number of cars in a system, the number of channels in a system, and the range of neighbors a car can see, the LMAO channel allocation methodology is found to perform significantly better than the VMESH and an upper bound approximated WAVE MAC channel allocation method.