Comparison of CSMA and TDMA for a Heartbeat VANET Application

Vehicular Ad-Hoc Networks (VANET) aim to increase security in the current transportation system by the means of wireless communication between vehicles and between vehicles and road infrastructure. In order to realize this goal, the Medium Access Control (MAC) protocol has to be highly reliable and has to assure a certain fairness between the nodes. In this paper, we make an in-depth analysis of the properties required from a MAC protocol in a VANET context. We then use these properties to compare the performance of two MAC protocols, one based on Carrier-Sense Multiple Access and the other using Time Division Multiple Access techniques in the case of a "heartbeat" application.