Usage of wireless LAN for inter-vehicle communication

In recent years the number of vehicles has been increasing constantly on European roads. This higher traffic density makes new security features a crucial point in order to keep safe traffic. Inter-vehicle communication offers a lot of possibilities in this field, like collision warning or sensor fusion with sensors distributed in several vehicles. Transmitting such data between vehicles has strict requirements for the networking technology. On the one hand the communication system itself, which is built of vehicles and is so highly dynamic, requires a technology capable of handling the physical effects caused by the mobility of the communication partners. On the other hand the applications themselves can have strict constraints, especially regarding latency. Up to now, there is no special technology standardised for inter-vehicle communication, but because of its availability the wireless LAN according to the standard IEEE 802.11 is often seen as a possible solution. In this paper we present the behaviour of this technology in different driving situations focusing on the effects caused by the physical layer and the medium access layer.