Solving the performance puzzle of DSRC multi-channel operations

Dedicated Short Range Communication (DSRC) protocol is a key enabling technology for enhancing road safety and transportation efficiency. Wireless Access in Vehicular Environments (WAVE) 1609.4 is a new amendment that enables multi-channel operations in DSRC. Operating intervals are divided into alternating Control Channel (CCH) Intervals and Service Channel (SCH) Intervals with an identical length. This alternating feature causes high packet losses in CCH and low throughput in SCH, and thus hinders the deployment of this protocol. The goal of our work is to provision sufficient reliability for safety messages in CCH while optimising non-safety service delivery in SCH. We develop analytical models to explore the relationship among traffic density, CCH packet loss ratio, SCH throughput, and the duration of each kind of intervals. We also design a multi-channel coordination algorithm which adaptively adjusts the duration of intervals to achieve better performance and reliability based on these models. Theoretical analysis and extensive simulation results demonstrate the accuracy of our model and the efficacy of the proposed algorithm.