On Spatially-Aware Channel Selection in Dynamic Spectrum Access Multi-Hop Inter-Vehicle Communications

The use of dynamic spectrum access techniques has a great potential in future inter-vehicle communications, while it must cope with (i) temporal and spatial spectrum utilization changes introduced by the primary and secondary users (environmental changes); and (ii) topology changes due to movement of vehicles (spatial movement). In the present paper, along this line, dynamic per-hop channel switching in multi-hop vehicular ad hoc networking is investigated. After defining a set of simple metric-based dynamic channel selection schemes with/without spatial-awareness, the basic performance (the total communication duration and the amount of transmitted data) are evaluated. These spatially-aware schemes estimate the maximum communication period, and tend to select a channel with a large amount of possible data transmission within the period. The simulation results demonstrate the advantages of the proposed spatial-awareness, especially in the multi-hop and highly congested environments with high-speed mobility.