Improving reliability of safety applications in vehicle ad hoc networks through the implementation of a cognitive network

Researchers have suggested Vehicular Ad hoc Networks as a way to enable car to car communications and to allow for the exchange of safety and other types of information among cars. The Wireless Access in Vehicular Environments (WAVE) protocol stack is standardized by the IEEE, and it allocates spectrum for vehicular communication. In our work we prove that it does not provide sufficient spectrum for reliable exchange of safety information. To alleviate this problem, we present a system that employs cognitive network principles to increase the spectrum allocated to the control channel (CCH) by the WAVE protocols, where all safety information is transmitted. To accomplish this objective, the proposed system relies on sensed data sent by the cars to road side units that in turn forward the aggregated data to a processing unit. The processing unit infers data contention locations and generates spectrum schedules to dispatch to the passing cars. Analysis and simulation results indicate the effectiveness of the system in improving data delivery in vehicular networks and thus increasing the reliability of safety applications.