Abstract—This paper presents the design of a CooperativeCollision Avoidance application, and evaluates itsperformance with DSRC-recommended 802.11 MediumAccess Control (MAC) and with a novel Vehicular Self-Organizing MAC (VeSOMAC) protocol. VeSOMAC isdesigned as a fully distributed TDMA protocol that relies onan in-band control exchange technique for autonomousTDMA slot allocation among vehicle-mounted wirelesscommunication modules. A hybrid traffic and wirelessnetwork simulator has been developed for evaluating bothnetwork level and application level performance in thepresence of different wireless access protocols. Detailednetwork and vehicular traffic simulation models have alsobeen developed for evaluating a Cooperative CollisionControl (CCA) application, operating in urban trafficintersection scenarios. Simulation results demonstrate thatunlike the 802.11 style contention based protocols, a schedulebased protocol such as VeSOMAC can offer better vehiclesafety performance through smaller and bounded packetlatency in vehicular ad hoc networks.

Index Terms—Inter-vehicle Networks, MAC, Selfconfiguration,Intelligent Transportation System, DSRC

Cite: Fan Yu and Subir Biswas, "Impacts of Radio Access Protocols on Cooperative Vehicle Collision Avoidance in Urban Traffic Intersections," Journal of Communications, vol. 3, no.4, September, pp. 41-48, 2008.