Advanced transmission cycle control scheme for autonomous decentralized TDMA protocol in safe driving support systems

When the volume of traffic on a roadway is so high such as traffic jam, medium access control (MAC) protocols in inter-vehicle communication (IVC) systems do not work well. The primary reason is the huge amount of communication traffic, which could be resolved by conventional transmission cycle control (TCC) schemes. However, when using TCC schemes, the failure of packet transmission extends the communication interval between vehicles, which can cause driving support systems that use IVC to malfunction. This paper proposes an advanced TCC scheme for realizing a safe driving support system. The proposed scheme exploits the frame-information exchange in the autonomous decentralized TDMA protocol, so that subsequent packets are transmitted rapidly even when failure occurs. Such a scheme is shown to be effective in terms of both communication quality and driving support systems.