Congestion Control Based on Channel Occupancy in Vehicular Broadcast Networks

Cooperative vehicle safety (CVS) systems rely on vehicular ad-hoc networks operating in broadcast mode to deliver vehicle tracking and safety information to neighboring cars. This information is used to enable collision avoidance and warning systems. One of the main challenges of the eventual large scale deployment of such systems is network congestion, which could critically degrade the quality of a CVS system. In this paper, we present a method for congestion monitoring and control based on limited feedback from the network. We study the relationship between channel occupancy, as a readily available feedback measure, controllable network parameters, and network performance. We describe a performance measure relevant to CVS systems and present a congestion control method, based on channel occupancy measurements, that robustly maintains the system performance near optimal operation points. We examine the convergence properties of the congestion control algorithm and provide guidelines for the design of such systems based on network and traffic density conditions. Through simulation experiments we show significant gains in performance when closed loop congestion control methods are applied.