A study of IEEE 802.11 standard for use in vehicle to infrastructure communication

In this paper, the IEEE 802.11 standard is assessed for vehicle-to-infrastructure communications for intelligent transportation systems. Specifically, a beaconing mechanism is considered for establishing connection between passing vehicles and roadside units for traffic monitoring, and the probability of successful data exchange between the vehicle and roadside unit is evaluated. The study considers varying beaconing interval duration and random vehicle speeds and presents an analytical evaluation of the probability of successful data exchange. To corroborate analytical results an ns3 simulator is also developed and the empirical values for the probability of successful data exchange are also obtained for comparison. Results indicate that the IEEE 802.11 standard with its beaconing mechanism can be successfully used for V2I communications.