52 Int. J. Internet Protocol Technology, Vol. 7, No.

1, 2012
Copyright 2012 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.
Memorised carrier sense multiple access with
collision avoidance (MCSMA/CA) protocol for
IEEE 802.11p
Jung-Shyr Wu*, Yen-Chieh Cheng and
Shiann-Tsong Sheu
Department of Communication Engineering,
National Central University,
Taoyuan, 32054, Taiwan
Fax: 886-3-4229187
E-mail: jswu@ee.ncu.edu.tw
E-mail: 93523048@cc.ncu.edu.tw
E-mail: stsheu@ce.ncu.edu.tw
*Corresponding author
Abstract: The wireless access in vehicular environment (WAVE) architecture has been
standardised in the IEEE 802.11p specification in order to be widely deployed in roadway
environments. The aim of the WAVE networks is to provide prompt emergency information as
well as internet connectivity. However, the IEEE 802.11p contention-based medium access
control (MAC) protocol would deteriorate transmission efficiency if the number of on-board
units (OBUs) contending on an SCH is large. Moreover, synchronizing all WAVE devices that
perform channel switching may experience a period of above-average channel congestion
immediately following a channel switch, possibly resulting in an unexpectedly high collision rate.
As a solution, we propose an efficiency improvement scheme, namely memorized carrier sense
multiple access with collision avoidance (MCSMA/CA) protocol, which improves the SCH
throughput by means of a channel context switch mechanism. Numerical and simulation results
demonstrate that the proposed scheme significantly promotes the standard transmission
efficiency.
Keywords: channel access; context switch; IEEE 1609.3; IEEE 1609.4; IEEE 802.11p; wireless
access in vehicular environment; WAVE.
Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Wu, J-S., Cheng, Y-C. and Sheu, S-T. (2012)
Memorised carrier sense multiple access with collision avoidance (MCSMA/CA) protocol for
IEEE 802.11p, Int. J. Internet Protocol Technology, Vol. 7, No. 1, pp.5261.
Biographical notes: Jung-Shyr Wu received his PhD in Electrical Engineering from the
University of Calgary Canada in 1989. He is a Full Professor in the Graduate Institute of
Communication Engineering at National Central University, Taiwan. His research interests
include computer networks, wireless networks, mobile communication and queuing theory.
Yen-Chieh Cheng received his BS in the Electrical Engineering from Tamkang University,
Taipei County, Taiwan, in 2004. Having completed his first year of graduate studies in the
Department of Communication Engineering, National Central University, Chungli City, Taoyuan
Taiwan. He is working towards his PhD degree. He is currently being supervised by
Dr. Jung-Shyr Wu and Dr. Shiann-Tsong Sheu. His research interests include personal
communication systems, wireless vehicular networks, and wireless broadband access networks.
Shiann-Tsong Sheu received his BS in Applied Mathematics from National Chung Hsing
University in 1990, and PhD in Computer Science from National Tsing Hua University in 1995.
From 1995 to 2002, he was an Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering at
Tamkang University. Since February 2002, he has been a Professor in the Department of
Electrical Engineering at Tamkang University. In August 2005, he joined to the Faculty of the
Department of Communication Engineering, National Central University. He received his
Outstanding Young Researcher Award from the IEEE Communication Society Asia Pacific
Board in 2002. His research interests include next-generation wireless communication, optical
networks, protocol designs and intelligent control algorithms. He has published more than
120 journal and conference papers.

Memorised carrier sense multiple access with collision avoidance (MCSMA/CA) protocol for IEEE 802.11p 53
1 Introduction
Dedicated short range communication (DSRC) system
(ASTM E2213-03, 2003) specifies a short to medium range
communication services to support both public safety and
private operations in roadside to vehicle (R2V) and vehicle
to vehicle (V2V) communication environments. The
growing wireless applications gradually make the concept
of intelligent vehicles with wireless devices become more
feasible and practical. Wireless devices used in vehicle
side and road side are named as on-board-unit (OBU)
and road-side-unit (RSU), respectively. The cooperation
between RSU and OBU can provide fancy intelligent
transportation system (ITS) services such as vehicle
positioning, electrical toll collection, parking lot payment,
cargo tracking, road condition warning, traffic information,
intersection collision warning, and so on. The IEEE 802.11p
(2010) working group called DSRC system as wireless
access in vehicular environments (WAVE) in the released
specification. The matured IEEE 802.11a (1999)
communication technology has been adopted by the WAVE
networks. Moreover, the IEEE 1609 working group has
defined the IEEE 1609.2 (2011), IEEE 1609.3 (2010), and
IEEE 1609.4 (2010) to specifically deal with security
services, networking services, and multichannel operation
in WAVE networks, respectively. More specifically,
IEEE 1609.2 specification defines message formats and
processes for WAVE devices, including methods to secure
WAVE management messages and application messages.
IEEE 1609.3 specification standardises the network
and transport layer protocols and services to support
multi-channel wireless connectivity and a specialised
WAVE short message (WSM) service between WAVE
devices. IEEE 1609.4 specification defines a management
extension entity to the media access control (MAC) so that
WAVE devices with one or more transceivers can
effectively switch among the control channel (CCH) and
service channels (SCHs). To make sure the communication
reliability in a WAVE network, all the messages are
transported on 5.9 GHz ITS licensed frequency band, which
is comprised of one CCH and six SCHs.
In order to make sure the communication reliability and
privacy in WAVE networks, all the messages are
transported on ITS licensed frequency band (from
5,850 MHz to 5,925 MHz), which is comprised of one CCH
and six exclusive SCHs. The RSU broadcasts system
information and urgent short messages on the CCH
periodically and an OBU accesses SCH(s) to communicate
with the RSU after it has synchronised with RSU and
received system information from the CCH. In other words,
the RSU in R2V architecture functionally serves as the base
station or access point for traffic to/from OBUs of vehicles
within its service area. Due to the consideration of cost
reduction the RSU and OBU may equip with a single
transceiver and thereby the RSU and OBUs have to
frequently switch their transceivers between CCH and SCH
in order to process the broadcast system information and
transportations of user data. Moreover, to guarantee the
immunity to out-of-channel interfering emissions, the
IEEE 802.11p specification has defined the adjacent
channel rejection (ACR) and non-adjacent channel rejection
(NACR) requirements for each bit rate and channel
bandwidth (IEEE Standard 802.11p-2010, 2010; Kenney,
2011).
To simplify multi-channel operation, the IEEE 1609.4
specification has defined alternating access scheme (AAS)
as shown in Figure 1(a). To do this, the WAVE system
divides the timeline into contiguous synchronisation
intervals, each of which, denoted as T
sync
, consists of a
fixed CCH interval, denoted as T
cch
, and a fixed SCH
interval, denoted as T
sch
. At the beginning of both CCH
interval and SCH interval is a guard interval, denoted as T
g
,
which is required for switching radio from one channel to
another. A channel cycle is started with CCH interval and
followed by the SCH interval. During CCH interval, a
cell-wise beacon frame is first broadcasted from the RSU
for providing synchronisation and system information to all
OBUs and followed by the WAVE service advertisement
(WSA) messages and urgent WSMs, if any. The WSA
message carries the provider service information and SCH
information so that all OBUs realise how to access SCHs
during the subsequent SCH interval. The default durations
of the CCH and SCH are set to 50 ms (i.e. T
cch
= T
sch
= T
act
=
50 ms) for controlling the maximal latency of urgent short
message broadcast. For data access in a T
sync
, WAVE
devices are only allowed to transmit data during T
sch
. It
implies that the length of inactive interval is equal to
the length of synchronisation interval excluding SCH
interval. We have T
inact
= 2 T
g
+ T
cch
. As a result, the
WAVE protocol adopts multichannel access scheme with
additional operating rules rather than the conventional IEEE
802.11-based (2007) single-channel access scheme. More
specifically, the AAS makes the RSU and OBU
alternatively access the CCH and an SCH for handling the
broadcast message and user traffic based on the structure of
synchronisation interval. It has been shown that the obvious
drawback of the AAS is the inefficient channel utilisation
(Wang et al., 2009; Chen et al., 2009). As portrayed in
Figure 1, the coloured and uncoloured rectangles
respectively represent the accessible intervals and
inaccessible intervals for OBUs. It is evident that the AAS
potentially wastes one half of the SCH bandwidth.
Moreover, the WAVE device with AAS obeys the
synchronisation interval to switch between the CCH and an
SCH periodically for handling the broadcast message and
user traffic separately. During CCH intervals, the WAVE
device is allowed to broadcast the urgent WSMs, which
carry the public safety information, on the CCH.
Considering the demanding of safety-of-life and internet
services, the AAS is likely to be a proper scheme because
the latency of a WAVE device to receive safety messages
from the CCH is highly controllable and predictable
regardless of whether WAVE devices desire to access data
services or not. However, the synchronicity of the switching
ensures that data packets queued for the same channel in
such WAVE devices are likely to collide once the channel
becomes available to them as portrayed in Figure 1(b).
54 J-S. Wu et al.
Although IEEE 802.11p standard adopted the carrier sense
multiple access with collision avoidance (CSMA/CA)
protocol, which was essentially designed for minimising
collisions during such periods of high load, may still render
a potential bottleneck and preponderantly limit the data
transmission. For example, when a data packet event occurs,
each of WAVE devices in detection area will have at least
one data packet ready to be transmitted at the beginning of
every SCH interval after a random backoff, the MAC layer
contention process could affect the forwarding delay and the
SCH application performance.
From above discussions, the obvious drawbacks of the
AAS are two-fold:
1 channel access scheme costs as much as 50% channel
resource wastage
2 synchronised transmissions immediately following a
channel switch result in data packet collisions.
To resolve channel resource wastage problem, the interval
adjustment approach can be purchased, wherein SCH
interval is prolonged to help increase the opportunities of
OBUs to access SCH, improve channel utilisation,
and improve service, all in a performance-effective
consideration (Huang et al., 2009; Sheu et al., 2011; Wang
et al., 2010). Additionally, the system throughput could be
improved via making a schedule for the OBUs to access
SCHs in a collision-free manner. To accomplish the
schedule, such scheme usually allots a portion of CCH
interval as a contention period, in which OBUs contend the
channel for making reservations (Reumerman et al., 2007).
There are several researches about packet delivery in
WAVE environment. The complex analysis (Badawy et al.,
2010) including QoS mechanism based on Markov model is
proposed to evaluate packet delivery. The works published
in Mii et al. (2010) is an analysis regarding to trade-off
issue for CCH/SCH duty cycle. The analysis presented in
Campolo et al. (2011) estimates the probability of a
successful packet delivery during CCH interval. However, it
assumes that each OBU has only one packet to transmit on
CCH and does not analyse system performance on CCH and
SCH. In Eichler (2007), author has analysed a WAVE
environment using simulator which is applicable to system
with four access categories of IEEE 802.11e (2005)
enhanced data channel access (EDCA). The contribution
analysing the performance of EDCA by Markov model for
WAVE environment (Gallardo et al., 2010) is proposed.
However, to resolve high collision rate problem, it is still
desired to design a smart scheme for WAVE networks,
where the system performance improvement can be
accomplished while backward compatibility is also
maintained. To curb the high collision rate and improve the
SCH performance of AAS, this paper proposes memorised
MCSMA/CA to let OBUs record the backoff counter and
retry number in the last SCH interval. In present SCH
interval, OBUs keep counting down the remainder
contention windows of the last SCH interval.
The remainder of this paper is organised as follows. In
Section 2, we propose the MCSMA protocol, intending to
complement the highly restrictive standard channel access
scheme. An analytical model for evaluating the performance
of MCSMA/CA protocol is provided in Section 3. A set of
simulation and numerical results for a typical R2V network
along with the insights revealed are reported in Section 4.
Finally, Section 5 completes this paper with our final
conclusions and possible future works.
Figure 1 The operation and problem of the AAS in WAVE network, (a) the AAS defined in WAVE networks (b) high probability of data
packet loss by the collision

(a)

(b)
Memorised carrier sense multiple access with collision avoidance (MCSMA/CA) protocol for IEEE 802.11p 55
Figure 2 An example of the proposed MCSMA/CA operation, context switch mechanism


2 The operation of MCSMA/CA protocol
Recall that the synchronicity of the switching ensures that
data queued for the same channel in such contending OBUs
are likely to collide once the channel becomes available to
them. Every OBU is to reset its random backoff counter and
undergo a new random backoff period at the beginning of
every SCH interval in the legacy AAS contention. In order
to resolve an unexpectedly high collision problem imposed
by legacy AAS, we propose an efficiency-improvement
scheme, namely MCSMA/CA protocol, which moderates
the channel congestion situation as well as promotes SCH
throughput via smartly evacuating OBUs to access the CCH
and SCHs. In this section, we will give an example of
MCSMA/CA so that the operation flow becomes more
comprehensible, introduce the requirements and
assumptions of the system, and concentrate the benefits of
applying MCSMA/CA protocol for the OBUs with a single
transceiver. After then, performance analysis of the
proposed MCSMA/CA will be given in the following
section.
As shown in Figure 2, we consider a typical network
where vehicles (i.e., OBUs) on the SCH transmit data
packets at the beginning of SCH interval. All OBUs realise
what service the RSU provides on SCHs and how to access
the SCHs via WSA messages during CCH interval. Here
each OBU is assumed to equip with a transceiver and obeys
the synchronisation interval to switch between the CCH and
an SCH periodically for handling the broadcast control
message (i.e., WSA and WSM) and user traffic separately.
If an OBU has data packets to transmit, then it performs a
random backoff procedure. After counting down the chosen
backoff window to zero, the OBU could transmit the data
packet number one on the SCH. On the contrary, the chosen
contention window size of data packet number two is too
long to count down toward zero before the end of the SCH
interval, the data packet number two is not allowed to
transmit. According to the policy of the legacy AAS with
standard CSMA/CA mechanism, each OBU is assumed to
reset its random backoff counter and undergo a new random
backoff period at the beginning of every SCH interval. It
results in a high collision rate problem easily because each
OBU at the beginning of every SCH interval selects a
random value from a range of minimum contention window
numbers. The key concept of proposed MCSMA/CA, which
memorises the last contention states including the remainder
backoff window size and the backoff retry number, is to
keep counting down the last remainder window size at the
present beginning of SCH interval. As a result,
MCSMA/CA can help to avoid high probability of
collisions after a channel switch when the number of OBUs
switching and contending for the same medium increases.
Figure 3 The flow chart of the MCSMA/CA

The flow chart of the MCSMA/CA protocol depicted in
Figure 3 has two phases. The phase number one which is
composed of three procedures: the first procedure represents
that all contending OBUs recording remainder backoff
counters and backoff retry numbers in the last SCH interval
are in guard interval, the second procedure indicates that the
MCSMA/CA performs CCH context switch to set the initial
56 J-S. Wu et al.
contention window size as the last remainder backoff
counter of the last CCH interval used in the present CCH
interval, and the last procedure shows that all OBUs
perform the standard CSMA/CA mechanism. In addition,
the phase number two which also consists of three
procedures: the first procedure describes that all contending
OBUs recording remainder backoff counters in the last
CCH interval are in guard interval, the second procedure
represents that the MCSMA/CA mechanism performs the
SCH context switch manner to set the first contention
window size as the last remainder backoff counter and the
backoff retry number is equal to the last recorded retry
number in the last SCH interval used in the present SCH
interval, and the third procedure shows that all OBUs
perform the standard CSMA/CA mechanism.
3 Performance analysis
Due to the CSMA/CA protocol defined in IEEE 802.11a
(1999) standard has been adopted by IEEE 802.11p standard
as its medium access control (MAC) protocol, the prior
analysis models for IEEE 802.11 single-channel network in
saturated traffic condition (Bianchi, 2000; Wu et al., 2001)
is applicable to IEEE 802.11p network except the single
channel operation. In this section, an analysis model is
proposed to investigate the performance of the MCSMA/CA
including SCH throughput, delay, and packet drop rate,
adopted in multi-channel WAVE networks.
3.1 Backoff state transitions
As shown in Figure 4, the bi-dimensional Markov model
characterises the contention process of an OBU to compete
the channel resource with the other OBUs. The saturated
traffic condition is assumed in this model. The considered
IEEE 802.11p MAC protocol always handles one packet at
a time, only the packet at the head of queue is processed and
the other packets, which arrive at the same time slot, are
buffered automatically. Due to the slotted-based operations
in the CSMA/CA protocol, which is the essential MAC
protocol of distributed coordination function (DCF) in IEEE
802.11 standard, events occurring on the SCH intervals can
be modelled on a discrete slotted time scale. Let N and
w
i
= 2
i
w
0
denote the number of OBUs on the roadway and
the backoff window, where the number i {0, 1, , R} is
the value of the backoff stage, w
0
is the initial backoff
window and R is the maximal number of backoff retries.
The states of backoff stage is denoted as (i, l), 0 i R,
0 l < w
i
, where i represents the backoff stage and l is the
value of backoff counter. Each state in the backoff stage is
denoted as state (i, l).
( )
0
0
{ , | , } , 0 , 0 1,
{ , | , 0} , 0 , 0 1,
{ , | , 1} , 0 , 0 1,
1
{0, | , 0} , 0 , 0 1,
{ , | 1, 0} , 0
inact i
inact
i
i
act i
act c
c act
i
P i l i l p i R l w
p
P i l i i R l w
w
P i l i l p i R l w
p p
P l i i R l w
w
p p
P i l i
w
= < <
= <
+ = <

=

= , 0 1.
i
i R l w
(1)
The first equation in (1) expresses that the backoff time is
frozen at the slot time in the inactive interval. In this
equation, p
inact
is the probability of an OBU not allowed to
contend the channel access opportunities on the SCH. We
have .
cch g
sync
T T
inact
T
p
+
= The second equation is used to derive
the probability of an OBU in the state (i, 0) enters the state
(i, l). In this equation,
inact
i
p
w
indicates that MAC layer
transmits a packet in the i
th
retry stage when the state
switches from active to inactive. The third equation
represents that the backoff time is decremented at the
beginning of each expected slot time in the active interval.
In this equation, the active probability of an OBU is
formulated as .
sch g
sync
T T
act
T
p

= The fourth equation states that
the state of an OBU enters the zeroth state after a successful
transmission. The last equation deals with the backoff state
transition caused from collision, where p
c
represents a
transmitted packet encounters a collision.
3.2 Data transmission probability
This section derives the delivery probability of data
transmission. Let b
i,l
denote the Markov chain steady state
probability distributions of an OBU staying in backoff stage
i, where l is the backoff counter value. It can be derived by
resolving the following equations.
,0 0,0
, if 0 ,
i
c act
i
inact
p p
b b i R
p

=


(2)
, ,0
2
1 ,
if 0 , 1 1.
i inact
i l i
i act
i
w l p
b b
w p
i R l w

= +




(3)
Considering the characteristic of balance equations in steady
state, equations (2) and (3) can be solved. From relations in
(3), all the values are expressed as functions of the value
b
0,0
. Therefore, the stationary probability b
0,0
can be solved
by imposing the normalisation conditions as follows.
The equation of the probability p
t
in (6) represents that
an OBU transmits in a randomly chosen time slot. If the
backoff counter is equal to zero, then data transmission
occurs.
1 1 1
, ,0 0,0
0 0 0 0 0
2
1 1 ,
i i i w w R R R
inact inact
c act c act
i l i
i
act i act
inact inact
i l i l i
p l p
p p p p
b b b
w
p w p
p p

= = = = =


= = = +





(4)
Memorised carrier sense multiple access with collision avoidance (MCSMA/CA) protocol for IEEE 802.11p 57
1
1
0,0 0
2
1
1
.
2
1
1
R
R
c act
c act
inact inact inact
c act
c act
c act
inact
inact
p p
p p
p p p
b w
p p
p p p p
p
p

+







= + +











(5)
,0 0,0
0 0
1
1
0
2
1
1
2
1
1 1
i
R R
inact
t i
act
i i
R
c act c act c act
inact inact inact
R
c act c act c act c act
inact inact inact inact
p
p b b
p
p p p p p p
p p p
p p p p w p p p p
p p p p
= =
+
+

= =










=


+






1
.
2
1
R
c act
inact
p p
p
+

(6)
Figure 4 The MCSMA/CA state transition diagram of an OBU in the Markov chain model


However, in general, p
t
depends on the conditional collision
probability p
c
, which is still unknown. To find the value of
p
c
it is worthwhile to note that the probability p
c
that a
transmitted data frame encounters a collision, is the
probability that at least one of N 1 remaining OBUs
transmit in a time slot. We have
( )
1
1 . 1
N
c t
p p

= (7)
58 J-S. Wu et al.
Equations (6) and (7) represent a non-linear system in the
two unknowns p
t
and p
c
, which can be solved using
numerical techniques. It is easy to prove that this system has
a unique solution. In fact, inverting (7), we obtain
* 1/( 1)
( ) 1 (1 ) ,
N
t c c
p p p

= and it is a continuous and
monotone decreasing function in the range p
c
(0, 1). The
function
*
( )
t c
p p returns one only when p
c
= 1, which
implies that every transmission attempt is failed. On the
other hand, the value of function
*
( )
t c
p p approximates
toward zero as p
c
= 0, which implies that all transmission
attempts are successful because of no collision. Uniqueness
of pt is now proven, because the constraint of equation (7) is
trivially shown to be a monotone decreasing function.
3.3 SCH throughput evaluation
To evaluate the effect upon the SCH throughput from
applying the MCSMA/CA protocol, the SCH throughput in
a WAVE network with MCSMA/CA is analysed. Here, the
analytical model considered in this paper is based on the
analytical model, which has been proposed to evaluate the
throughput performance in IEEE 802.11 (Bianchi, 2000).
To concentrate on the performance of proposed
MCSMA/CA protocol, a single hop R2V scenario, an
error-free channel condition and the non-hidden-node
situation are assumed. In order to evaluate the SCH
throughput, we assume that each of N OBUs has infinite
traffic supply on the roadway, and thus always has packets
to transmit at the beginning of every SCH interval. All the
data frames have a same priority level and every OBU is
assumed to remain its random backoff counter and undergo
the last remainder random backoff period at the beginning
of every SCH interval in order to avoid start-of-interval
contention.
The probability p
tr
indicates that there is at least one
transmission in the considered time slot. Hence, N OBUs
contend on the SCH, each OBU transmits with probability
p
t
. We have
( ) 1 . 1
N
tr t
p p = (8)
The probability p
s
represents that an OBU experiencing
successful data transmission which is conditioned on the
fact that at least one OBU transmits. We have
( )
( )
( )
1
1
1
1 1
.
1 1
N
t t N
t t
s
N
tr
t
N
p p
N p p
p
p
p

= =

(9)
Let TH denote the normalised SCH throughput, defined as
the fraction of time the SCH is used to successfully transmit
data payload which is measured in bits. By equations (8)
and (9), the function of deriving the SCH throughput
excluding protocol overhead that can be achieved by the
proposed MCSMA/CA protocol is given by
( ) ( )
8
,
1 1
s tr d
tr s s tr c tr s
p p L
TH
p p T p T p p

=
+ +
(10)
where notations L
d
, r
d
, , T
s
, and T
c
denote the average
payload sizes (in bytes) of an data payload, the employed
data transmission rate of an OBU, the time period of an
empty slot, the time period of a successful transmission, and
the time period of a failed contention, respectively. From
Figure 5, T
s
and T
c
can be derived from (11). We have
,
,
s f SIFS ACK DIFS
c f DIFS
T T T T T
T T T
= + + +

= +

(11)
where T
f
= T
AIFS
+ T
h
+ L
d
8 / r
d
+ T
SIFS
+ T
ACK
, where
T
h
= T
PLCP
+ L
MAC
8 / r
b
is the duration of the physical layer
convergence protocol (PLCP) and MAC header, L
f
is the
average payload sizes (in bytes) of an MAC data frame,
T
ACK
= T
PLCP
+ L
ACK
8 / r
b
is the duration of the PLCP and
ACK control frame, T
SIFS
is the duration of the short
interframe space (SIFS), T
AIFS
is the duration of arbitrary
interframe space (AIFS), and r
b
is the basic transmission
rate employed in network. Notably, the AIFS is a time
interval between frames being transmitted under the IEEE
802.11e EDCA MAC protocol and it is set as the DCF
interframe space (DIFS) in this paper.
Figure 5 The time period used to accomplish data transmission,
(a) the time period for a successful transmission (b) the
time period wasted from a failed transmission

(a)

(b)
3.4 Packet delay
The notation D denotes as the time interval from the time
that a packet is ready for transmission at the head of its
queue to the time that an acknowledgement is received for
the packet. The time delay for the dropped packet because
of reaching maximal number of backoff retries will not be
included in the calculation of the average packet delay. Let
E[X] and d
i
denote the average number of time slots
required for a successful data transmission and the average
time that a packet is not dropped when the backoff stage
reaches i. Therefore, the average packet delay E[D] for a
successful transmission is given by:
1
1
0
1
1
0
[ ] [ ]
1
1
, if 0 .
2 1
R
i R
c c
i s s
R
c
i
R
i R
i c c
s
R
c
i
p p
d E D E X T T
p
w p p
T i R
p
+
+
=
+
+
=

= =

+
=

(12)
Memorised carrier sense multiple access with collision avoidance (MCSMA/CA) protocol for IEEE 802.11p 59
3.5 Packet drop probability
The notation p
d
is defined as the probability that a packet is
dropped when the maximal number of backoff retries is
reached. We have
1
.
R
d c
p p
+
= (13)

Figure 6 Comparisons of numerical and simulation results of SCH throughput, delay, and loss rate with parameters w
0
= 32 from
MCSMA/CA and CSMA/CA, (a) throughput (w
0
= 32, R = 3) (b) delay (w
0
= 32, R = 3) (c) drop rate (w
0
= 32, R = 3)
(d) throughput (w
0
= 32, R = 5) (e) delay (w
0
= 32, R = 5) (f) drop rate (w
0
= 32, R = 5) (g) throughput (w
0
= 32, R = 7)
(h) delay (w
0
= 32, R = 7) (i) drop rate (w
0
= 32, R = 7)

(a) (b) (c)

(d) (e) (f)

(g) (h) (i)




60 J-S. Wu et al.
4 Numerical and simulation results
In order to compare the performance of standard CSMA/CA
protocol adopted by the IEEE 802.11p networks and
proposed MCSMA/CA protocols, the SCH throughput,
delay, and packet drop rate are used as the primary metrics.
To concentrate on the performance of MCSMA/CA
protocol, an error-free channel condition and the
non-hidden-node situation are assumed in the NS2
simulator. The RSU equipped serving OBUs with a single
transceiver is installed at the centre of roadways. Each OBU
on the roadway also equipped with a single transceiver
always has data packets to transmit. The other WAVE
network parameters adopted in simulations are listed in
Table 1. All OBU could communicate with each other and
they are randomly scattered on the 500 metre long roadway.
The simulations results are all depicted as a function of
parameter density (OBUs/m). We have the densities from
0.02 to 0.2 OBUs/m. Network only generates uplink traffic
(from OBU to RSU) in order to evaluate the performance of
proposed MCSMA/CA protocol. Simulation and numerical
results of the proposed MCSMA/CA and standard
CSMA/CA, denoted as MCSMA/CA(ns2), MCSMA/CA
(num), CSMA/CA(ns2), and CSMA/CA(num) in the
illustrations, respectively, are evaluated on the performance
of SCH throughput, delay, and packet drop rate.
Table 1 System parameters
Parameter Value
PLCP header (T
PLCP
) 48 s
MAC header (L
MAC
) 30 bytes
data size (L
d
) 1,024 bytes
ACK frame size (L
ACK
) 14 bytes
Sync interval (T
sync
) 100 ms
CCH interval (T
cch
) 50 ms
SCH interval (T
sch
) 50 ms
Guard interval (T
g
) 4 ms
SIFS (T
SIFS
) 32 s
DIFS (T
DIFS
) 58 s
Time slot () 13 s
r
b
3 Mbps
r
d
24 Mbps
Figures 6(a), 6(d) and 6(g) portray the SCH throughput as a
function of density under different maximal retry numbers.
It can be observed that both the SCH throughput of the
proposed MCSMA/CA and standard CSMA/CA severely
downgrade when R is equal to three. Synchronising all
OBUs that perform channel switching results in high
collision rate as the value of maximal retry number is small
whether the MCSMA/CA is adopted or not. However, the
proposed MCSMA/CA protocol can sustain a stable SCH
throughput when the value of maximal retry number is
larger than three. Figures 6(b), 6(e) and 6(h) further
illustrate the relations between delay and density under
different maximal retry numbers R. We can observe that
results are very close, because throughput and delay depend
on maximal retry number. The increase of the maximal retry
number results in more successful transmitted packets and
consequently the SCH throughput is improved. In addition,
delay strongly depends on the maximal retry number and
increases with higher maximal retry number R. From
Figures 6(c), 6(f) and 6(i), we can observe that the high
packet drop rate is corresponds to the more collisions
resulting in reductions of transmission opportunities.
However, the proposed MCSMA/CA improving collision
rate can still have opportunities to deliver data to the
wireless medium. From these results, it is not difficult to
find that the numerical results are very close to the
simulation results and the curves of MCSMA/CA with
R = 5 and R = 7 are higher than that of R = 3 under the same
setting for the other parameters.
5 Conclusions
This paper has revealed that the primary reasons of SCH
throughout deterioration in the IEEE 802.11p AAS are
two-fold: the alternative channel access and the overhead of
contention protocol. In this paper, we have proposed the
memorised carrier sense multiple access with collision
avoidance, namely MCSMA/CA, to promote the SCH
throughput and resolve high packet collision rate. The key
concept of proposed MCSMA/CA, which memorises the
last contention states including the remainder backoff
window size and the backoff retry number, is to keep
counting down the last remainder window size at the present
beginning of channel interval. Performance evaluation
results further confirm that the MCSMA/CA protocol can
sustain a high throughput and avoid a high collision rate
resulted from contentions.
Regarding the future work, it is worthwhile to evaluate
the impact of the proposed MCSMA/CA protocol on ACs
differentiation on the SCH, CCH performance and
reliability of transmission. In addition, a more deep
understanding of the influence from channel interval
adjustment scheme and distributions of data traffic and
vehicular location models shall also be established.
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