Experimental Evaluation of IEEE 802.11p in High-Speed Trials for Safety-Related Applications

Abstract

This paper presents and analyzes a test campaign's outcomes to assess the application-level performance of IEEE 802.11p at high speeds of up to 250 km/h. The main focus is on safety-related applications, but we also discuss performance figures resulting from additional tests performed to address other purposes that might use lower transmission powers. In particular, we investigate the impact that speed, transmission power, distance, and different degrees of congestion may have on application-level metrics such as TCP Goodput, UDP Goodput, RTT, Jitter, and Datagram/Packet Loss in real-world scenarios, and aim to find out which guarantees can be obtained in those environments with generic off-the-shelf equipment. Overall, the results indicate that IEEE 802.11p can satisfy safety-related requirements even as vehicles move with high velocity in heavily congested networks. For other kinds of applications, the performance might be compromised, especially under congestion, but figures attest that these networks may also serve additional purposes unanticipated when the standard was introduced.