Down the Block and Around the Corner The Impact of Radio Propagation on Inter-vehicle Wireless Communication

Vehicular networks are emerging as a new distributed system environment with myriad possible applications. Most studies on vehicular networks are carried out via simulation, given the logistical and economical problems with largescale deployments. This paper investigates the impact of realistic radio propagation settings on the evaluation of VANET-based systems. Using a set of instrumented cars, we collected IEEE 802.11b signal propagation measurements between vehicles in a variety of urban and suburban environments. We found that signal propagation between vehicles varies in different settings, especially between lineof-sight (“down the block”) and non line-of-sight (“around the corner”) communication in the same setting. Using a probabilistic shadowing model, we evaluate the impact of different parameter settings on the performance of an epidemic data dissemination protocol and discuss the implications of our findings. We also suggest a variation of a basic signal propagati...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2009
• Where: ICDCS
• Authors: John S. Otto, Fabián E. Bustamante, Randall A. Berry
• Keywords: Computer Science, ICDCS 2009, Signal Propagation, Signal Propagation Measurements, Signal Propagation Model