On the coexistence of IEEE 802.11ac and WAVE in the 5.9 GHz Band

The IEEE Wireless Access in Vehicular Environment, or WAVE, system uses 5.9 GHz band. Recently, however, the FCC announced its intention to share the band for WLANs based on new standards such as IEEE 802.11ac. In this article, we discuss the problems in the possible coexistence scenario of WAVE and WLAN, such as direct competition between WLAN and WAVE devices for bandwidth and the hidden terminal problem. The problems are exacerbated by the different bandwidth used by the two technologies, so the only usable sensing method between them is energy detection. In this article, we consider one way to address the problems within the current standards framework, which is the combined control of interframe space and the receiver sensitivity on the WLAN devices cued by the energy detection.