Physical and MAC layer design for active signaling schemes in vehicular networks

Abstract

Nowadays, many telecommunication systems (wifi, cable systems and 4G, 5G cellular networks) use Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) as the physical layer standard. The design of efficient OFDM signal detection algorithms is very important to provide reliable systems, and this is particularly true for Vehicular Adhoc Networks (VANETs) involving autonomous vehicles, where missing a signal or detecting a fake one may cause a dangerous situation. The performance of these algorithms is generally evaluated in terms of their robustness against noise. In this paper, we evaluate the probability of error in signal detection in order to establish the minimum length of preamble needed for the active signaling process. This mechanism is used in AS-DTMAC (active signaling fully distributed TDMA-based MAC protocol) to reduce access collisions. Thus, by reducing the length of the preamble, greater time is given for the payload part of the packet, resulting in increased throughput.