Evaluating WiMAX for vehicular communication applications

Road accidents have a dramatic social and economic impact on the society, a situation that fostered the research of mechanisms for increasing road safety. Many of these mechanisms require the ability of the vehicles to communicate among each other and/or with fixed road-side stations. Due to the inherent mobility constraints, wireless technologies play a central role in this type of applications. Despite having been originally developed to delivery last mile wireless broadband access, as an alternative to cable and DSL, WiMAX presents some attractive attributes, such as quality-of-service management and traffic differentiation that are well suited for use in traffic applications. Nevertheless, to the best of our knowledge, no research in this area has considered the use of this technology. Thus, this WIP presents a preliminary study and assessment of the WiMAX technology for vehicular communications usage.