Reliability analysis of IEEE 802.11p wireless communication and vehicle safety applications

In this paper we analyze the performance of IEEE 802.11p vehicular networks used as communication media to warn drivers about hazardous situations on the road. In particular, this paper is focused in three typical active safety applications which are based on the cooperation among vehicles and intelligent elements placed on the road. The reliability of these applications relies on the performance of the radio link among the agents involved in the cooperative scenario, so first we analyze the goodput, Package Delivery Rate (PDR) and delay of this link. Once the behavior of the media is characterized, the kindness of the safety applications is studied. These measures were carried out in real V2V and I2V scenarios using a compliant IEEE 802.11p prototype developed by NEC.