Reliability and Efficiency of Vehicular Network Applications

The DSRC/WAVE initiative is forecast to enable a plethora of applications, classified in two broad types of safety and non-safety applications. In the former type, the reliability performance is of tremendous prominence while, in the latter case, the efficiency of information dissemination is the key driving factor. For safety applications, we adopt a systematic approach to analytically investigate the reliability of the communication system in a symbiotic relationship with the host system comprising a vehicular traffic system and radio propagation environment. To this aim, the¬ interference factor is identified as the central element of the symbiotic relationship. Our approach to the investigation of interference and its impacts on the communication reliability departs from previous studies by the degree of realism incorporated in the host system model. In one dimension, realistic traffic models are developed to describe the vehicular traffic behaviour. In a second dimension, a realistic radio propagation model is employed to capture the unique signal propagation aspects of the host system. We address the case of non-safety applications by proposing a generic framework as a capstone architecture for the development of new applications and the efficiency evaluation of existing ones. This framework, while being independent from networking technology, enables accurate characterization of the various information dissemination tasks that a node performs in cooperation with others. As the central element of the framework, we propose a game theoretic model to describe the interaction of meeting nodes aiming to exchange information of mutual or social interests. An adaptive mechanism is designed to enable a mobile node to measure the social significance of various information topics, which is then used by the node to prioritize the forwarding of information objects

Rate-Adaptation Based Congestion Control for Vehicle Safety Communications

This thesis deals with the scalability of Vehicle Safety Communications (VSC), where vehicles exchange periodic status messages to support future driver assistance applications. We systematically develop a design methodology for congestion control in VSC and present a resulting protocol named PULSAR. While previous works typically focused on controlling channel load only, we thereby integrate a concept which allows the adaptation to operate within the limits defined by safety applications