Throughput persistence of scalable mobile ad-hoc networks: evaluation and enhancement

The dedicated short range communication (DSRC) protocol allows for vehicle-to-vehicle wireless communication in an ad-hoc configuration. Vehicles participating in the network can act as the source or the sink of the road condition and other types of information, or as nodes taking part in routing a message towards its destination in a multi-hop fashion. The MAC layer definitions of the proposed DSRC standard for vehicle-to-vehicle and roadside-to-vehicle communications have evolved from the specifications for the IEEE 802.11 standard, which supports a distributed coordination function (DCF) mode of operation based on a carrier sense multiple access method with collision avoidance (CSMA/CA). We study the throughput persistence of networks with varying sizes, which is a common fact in vehicular applications.