Understanding the performance of short-lived control broadcast packets in 802.11p/WAVE Vehicular networks

The 802.11p standard has been recently standardized to provide Wireless Access in Vehicular Environments (WAVE). A multi-channel architecture is envisioned to concurrently support both time-sensitive safety-related applications and value-added informative and entertainment services. According to the WAVE specifications, an alternating channel access scheme allows single-radio devices to tune into a common frequency during the control channel (CCH) interval, to exchange safety and control packets, and to subsequently switch to one of the available service channels (SCHs) for non-safety related data exchange. Broadcasting of short-lived packets is largely expected to be used on the CCH to deliver periodic status updates from vehicles and network initialization information. This paper investigates the joint impact of different packet generation patterns and contention window sizes on the delivery of broadcast packets on the CCH by accounting for WAVE channel switching under different traffic load conditions, data rate and packet size values.