A multi-channel token ring protocol for QoS provisioning in inter-vehicle communications

This paper proposes a multi-channel token ring media access control (MAC) protocol (MCTRP) for inter-vehicle communications (IVC). Through adaptive ring coordination and channel scheduling, vehicles are autonomously organized into multiple rings operating on different service channels. Based on the multi-channel ring structure, emergency messages can be disseminated with a low delay. With the token based data exchange protocol, the network throughput is further improved for non-safety multimedia applications. An analytical model is developed to evaluate the performance of MCTRP in terms of the average full ring delay, emergency message delay, and ring throughput. Extensive simulations with ns-2 are conducted to validate the analytical model and demonstrate the efficiency and effectiveness of the proposed MCTRP.