Saturation throughput analysis of WAVE networks in Doppler spread scenarios

IEEE 802.11p, also known as wireless access in vehicular environment (WAVE), extends the applications of IEEE 802.11 to a fast fading vehicular communication environment. In WAVE systems, Doppler effect should not be ignored because of the high velocity of vehicles. Hence, in this paper the authors study the characteristics of physical layer WAVE system in the presence of the Doppler spectrum, such as symbol error rate performance and inter-subcarrier interference power. The throughput performance expression of a WAVE system is derived theoretically, which is the function of the frame size, number of the nodes, transmission probability, frame error rate and Doppler spread. Based on the obtained expressions, the optimal frame size, transmission probability and the number of nodes supportable in the WAVE system are derived to evaluate the maximum throughput performance. Finally, to validate the analytical results, simulations have been conducted to show the effectiveness of the proposed scheme.