Abstract

The global population spends a tremendous amount of time in traffic every day. For example, it is estimated that average American spends at least 50 min a day commuting [1]. Vehicular sensor networks, which leverage vehicular sensors and wireless communication, could improve our in-car experience by making travel safer and faster. In the past decades, with the advance of the new technologies, various electronics components started to be included in the automotive system such as acoustic, infrared, and still/motion video cameras. In recent years, most new vehicles come already equipped with GPS receivers and navigation systems. Car manufacturers such as Ford, GM, BMW, and Toyota have already announced efforts to include significant computing power within their automotive design [2–5]. After Google revealed its first self-driving car, a number of automakers began venturing into this research area. This trend is expected to continue, and, in the near future, the number of vehicles equipped with computing technologies and wireless network interfaces will increase dramatically. These vehicles will be able to run network protocols that will exchange messages for safer and more fluid traffic on the roads. Several protocols have been proposed for implementing vehicular communication. The most promising standard is IEEE 802.11p. The physical layer of 802.11p is dedicated short-range 5.9 GHz for communication among vehicles and with roadside infrastructure [6].