Characterizing Multi-Hop Communication in Vehicular Networks

Majority of characterization studies on Vehicular Networks are based on simulations that assume little network errors and consistent signal strength. Existing VANET experiments, on the other hand, focus mostly on single-hop communication. In this paper, we present the results of an extensive measurement campaign involving up to six vehicles and evaluating the performance of IEEE 802.11 in different vehicular communication scenarios: vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) and infrastructure-to-vehicle (I2V). We concentrate our evaluation on multi-hop communication in these two scenarios. We found that distance and line of sight communication are the two main factors affecting the multi-hop inter-vehicle communication. The experimental results confirm also the feasibility of using ad hoc networks to extend the transmission range of the infrastructure and the connection time for cars in motion.