Wireless LAN performance under varied stress conditions in vehicular traffic scenarios

Abstract

Mobile ad-hoc networking with wireless LAN infrastructure can be employed to build inter-vehicle communication based applications. The associated high velocities and hostile driving environments pose a challenge to the performance of a wireless LAN. This paper assesses the performance of a wireless local area network in different vehicular traffic and mobility scenarios. The network throughput and the quality of the wireless communication channel, measured on IEEE 802.11b compliant equipment, are observed to degrade with increasingly stressful communication scenarios. The test scenarios are varied by conducting the experiments under different vehicular mobility, peer-distance and driving environment conditions. We present results that can facilitate development of efficient applications for inter-vehicular communication. We also suggest optimization measures through aggression control via variations in packet size.