TDMA scheduling strategies for vehicular ad hoc networks: from a distributed to a centralized approach

International audienceVehicular Ad hoc NETworks, known as VANETs, are deployed to reduce the risk of road accidents as well as to improve passenger comfort and safety by allowing vehicles to exchange different kinds of data. Medium Access Control protocols, namely those that are based on TDMA technique play a primary role in providing bounded transmission delay while minimizing data packet loss. However, due to mobility constraints and frequent changes in topology, slot scheduling is a more challenging task in VANETs than in other networks. Many MAC protocols based on TDMA for vehicular networks have been proposed to date. Among them, CTMAC is a centralized scheduling mechanism, while DTMAC, VeMAC and AD-HOCMAC are three distributed TDMA based MAC protocols. In this paper, we evaluate and analyze the performance these four protocols. The scenarios used in the simulation experiments take into account density variation factor that influences protocol performance. We use the MOVE and SUMO tools to generate realistic mobility scenarios. Performance metrics such as access collision, merging collision rate, packet loss and overhead are evaluated using NS-2.34

A Centralized TDMA based Scheduling Algorithm for Real-Time Communications in Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks

International audience—As wireless technologies inside smart cars are increasing , Vehicular Ad hoc NETworks (VANETs) are becoming a promising way to enhance driver and passenger safety by enabling each vehicle to provide a warning in real time when a critical event is predicted. These applications require reliable broadcast schemes with minimum access delay and transmission collisions, which thus increase the need for an efficient Medium Access Control (MAC) protocol. However, the design of an efficient MAC protocol in VANET networks is a challenging task due to the high speed of the nodes, the frequent changes in network topology and various QoS requirements. Motivated by this observation, in this paper we present a Centralized TDMA based MAC protocol named CTMAC for real-time communications in VANETs. In our solution, Road Side Units (RSUs) are used as central coordinators to schedule and maintain time slot assignment for the vehicles in their coverage areas. In this work, we will show how interference between vehicles in the overlapping regions can be avoided without using any complex spectrum mechanisms such as CDMA or OFDMA. The simulation results reveal that CTMAC significantly outperforms the VeMAC and ADHOC MAC protocols. in terms of transmission collisions and the overhead required to create and maintain the TDMA schedules

TDMA-based MAC Protocols for Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks: A Survey, Qualitative Analysis and Open Research Issues

International audience—Vehicular Ad-hoc NETworks (VANETs) have attracted a lot of attention in the research community in recent years due to their promising applications. VANETs help improve traffic safety and efficiency. Each vehicle can exchange information to inform other vehicles about the current status of the traffic flow or a dangerous situation such as an accident. Road safety and traffic management applications require a reliable communication scheme with minimal transmission collisions, which thus increase the need for an efficient Medium Access Control (MAC) protocol. However, the design of the MAC in a vehicular network is a challenging task due to the high speed of the nodes, the frequent changes in topology, the lack of an infrastructure, and various QoS requirements. Recently several Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA)-based medium access control protocols have been proposed for VANETs in an attempt to ensure that all the vehicles have enough time to send safety messages without collisions and to reduce the end-to-end delay and the packet loss ratio. In this paper, we identify the reasons for using the collision-free medium access control paradigm in VANETs. We then present a novel topology-based classification and we provide an overview of TDMA-based MAC protocols that have been proposed for VANETs. We focus on the characteristics of these protocols, as well as on their benefits and limitations. Finally, we give a qualitative comparison, and we discuss some open issues that need to be tackled in future studies in order to improve the performance of TDMA-based MAC protocols for vehicle to vehicle (V2V) communications