Communication Density: A Channel Load Metric for Vehicular Communications Research

While scalability is a fundamental topic in vehicular safety communications, the question of how to measure it has not been satisfactorily resolved. This paper introduces the concept of communication density, which can effectively serve as a metric for channel load in vehicular communications. Communication density is the number of carrier sensible events per unit of time and road. The simulation results presented in this paper demonstrate that broadcast transmissions with the same power produce equivalent performances in scenarios characterized by the same composite communication density. As such, this metric provides the basis for distributed congestion control design in vehicular safety communications. Also, it significantly reduces the complexity of simulations setups for vehicular safety applications studies.