Experimental characterization of DSRC signal strength drops

Dedicated Short Range Communication (DSRC) is gaining momentum as the protocol of choice for wireless vehicle safety applications by automotive original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and road operators. DSRC is a low latency and reliable vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) communication protocol. A wide range of its applications have been conceptualized to support safety, mobility and convenience, including: cooperative collision avoidance, travel information, and electronic payment. Nulls in the communication signal strength have been reported in several recent government sponsored, private, and academia research studies but have not been analyzed sufficiently to predict their occurrence. In this paper we derive an expression for predicting the null locations using an interference model based on two-ray ground reflection. We demonstrate the improvement in accuracy over existing analytical accounts by applying the derived expression to the experimental data we collected as well as to data found in literature.