269500 - Research Topics

Frame Capture in 802.11p vehicular

networks

Author: Supervisors:
Pieter van Wijngaarden Dr.ir. Geert Heijenk
Martijn van Eenennaam, M.Sc.

August 18, 2010

Contents
1 Introduction 1

2 Vehicular networks and their applications 2

2.1 Applications and their advantages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
2.2 Challenges . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

3 IEEE 802.11 Wireless Networks 4

3.1 IEEE 802 Networking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
3.2 The 802.11 MAC layer: CSMA/CA and the DCF . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
3.3 Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
3.3.1 Introduction to OFDM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
3.3.2 OFDM Mathematics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
3.3.3 Guard times, coding and forward error correction . . . . . . . . . . 10
3.3.4 Strengths and weaknesses of OFDM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
3.3.5 OFDM Transmission and Reception blocks . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
3.4 IEEE standard draft: 802.11p . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

4 Frame Capture 15
4.1 What is FC? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
4.2 Scenario classifications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
4.3 802.11p scenario predictions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

5 Potential impact of FC on vehicular networks 23

6 Conclusion 24
6.1 Master’ thesis lookahead . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24

A Appendix 28
A.1 Orthogonality of multiple sinusoidals and their frequency spacing . . . . . 28

1 Introduction

The last few years the IEEE has been working on a new standard in the wireless domain
specifically designed for vehicular environments: 802.11p. This standard is still in the
draft phase, but many universities and companies have already begun exploring possible
applications. One of these applications is vehicle safety. Allowing wireless communica-
tion between vehicles could enable a wide range of safety features in cars such as brake
assist, notification of accidents, and passing emergency vehicles or information about
the traffic density on the road ahead and implied speed predictions. Another important
application for the Dutch highway network and for our research group is traffic efficiency.
We are currently investigating these possible safety and efficiency applications.

1
Many challenges lie ahead before these technologies can be seen on the road. One of the
important challenges is to fully understand how a Vehicular Ad-hoc Network (VANET)
behaves at high speeds with extreme mobility. Examples are users/cars entering and
exiting networks every second and possible routing information being outdated the very
second it is generated.
Our main research question is focused on a specific phenomenon at the 802.11 physical
layer called Frame Capture (FC, also referred to as Physical Layer Capture). It is an
effect that comes into play when two frames are being transmitted simultaneously (for
example because of the hidden terminal problem); a receiver might receive one of the
two colliding frames correctly depending on signal strength and timing variations. We
suspect that due to the nature of VANET communications with lots of broadcast traffic,
FC could have a significant impact on the network throughput. Our goal is to gain more
insight in the influence FC has on this; if we understand it better we can get a more
realistic model of how network traffic flows in a vehicular network.
This report is structured as follows: in Chapter 2 we look at the possibilities and ad-
vantages of vehicular networks and the typical challenges we face when employing one.
After that we discuss the standard 802.11 MAC and PHY layers and their properties,
where we especially look at 802.11a and p because of their similarity. We also look at the
details of OFDM and the modulations used in both standards. Then, in Chapter 4 we
further explain FC and perform a literature study to get a more detailed view on when
and under which circumstances FC occurs and what the various signal requirements are.
In Chapter 5 we discuss why we suspect FC to be so important for vehicular networks,
and finally in Chapter 6 we look at various simulation options and scenarios we will
perform later, using this literature study as a basis.

2 Vehicular networks and their applications

This chapter discusses some of the basics about VANETs; why do we want them, what
can they do for us and what do we need to take into consideration when designing such
a network?

2.1 Applications and their advantages

Vehicular networks are networks between vehicles which can be used for a wide variety
of applications. If the network involves an infrastructure with nodes or access points
alongside of the road (connected to the Internet), these applications could be any user-
centered application which are already available on a normal personal computer or mobile
device, such as instant messaging, automatically updating maps for use with GPS or
Galileo, streaming videos for the kids in the back of the car or even multi-player gaming.
These networks however can also be made in a complete ad-hoc manner, creating a

2
network between adjacent vehicles without access points or central organization. This
does not enable many connectivity features for the user or driver of the car, but can
mainly be useful in safety- and efficiency-oriented applications. This last scenario is
what we focus on, we talk about a vehicular network as if it were a Mobile Ad-Hoc
Network (or MANET) and call it just like many others a Vehicular Ad-hoc Network (or
VANET) [1, 2].
To give some examples of safety-improving applications: cars could send notifications
about events such as accidents to all cars which are about to pass a crash site. They
could then take appropriate action like slowing down or switching lanes in a coordinated
manner. Emergency vehicles could transmit messages requesting to free up a lane to
advance quickly to the crash site. Or in a more preventive way: cars could send a
message to the cars behind them if they need to brake suddenly, implementing some
form of communication-aided brake assist.
Apart from increased vehicle safety VANETs also have possible efficiency success factors.
The traffic density on the Dutch highways is enormous, not just around the big cities,
and on average working days there are over 200 km of traffic jams. This is about 4% of
the entire Dutch highways network. Peaks in congestion due to weather conditions can
rise up to 800 kilometers. The Dutch Ministry of Transport, Public Works and Water
Management calculated that the annual economical damage caused by traffic jams was
between 2,8 and 3,6 billion euros in 2008. This was an increase of 7 percent compared
to 2007, and even a 78 percent increase compared to 2000 [3]. These costs include
both direct and indirect economical damage; things like extra fuel usage, the implied
environmental footprint, and commuters arriving late at work which causes companies
to lose time and money. This doesn’t only apply to the Dutch highways however, most
big cities around the globe suffer from heavy traffic congestion at peak hours.
If vehicles on the highway would be able to coordinate their speed (and possibly their
route/destination) with all other vehicles around them using V2V communication and
make intelligent decisions regarding their speed, not just based on the 10 vehicles in
front of the driver (what the driver can see), but based on all vehicles in the coming 50
kilometers, the result would be a lot more even flow of traffic, resulting in fewer traffic
jams and major decrease of economical damage because of traffic congestion.

2.2 Challenges

In a vehicular networking environment, two typical scenarios need to be considered:

urban and highway environments. In both cases the ’ad-hoc’ characteristic of the network
is quite extreme. On the highway vehicles usually do not stay close to each other for a
long time, and all vehicles travel in the same direction but at every fork or exit nodes
can enter or leave the network. It is thus incorrect to assume that a node in the network
is still there if it was 60 seconds ago. This is even more true in an urban environment,
where the vehicles have an even higher degree of freedom and mobility [4, 5].

3
In such an environment, it is very impractical and in some cases impossible to use a
standard 802.11a, b or g wireless (ad-hoc) network. Things like authentication, updating
routing tables and sending packets to other nodes is very unreliable because the network
topology changes too much in too short periods of time. Typical AP (access point)
scanning costs between 70 and 600 ms, authentication between a few ms up to more
than a second, depending on the type of authentication, and association costs around 15
ms but is quite vendor specific. Also the association time needed increases if the user’s
sessions need to be handed over from another AP to the new one the user is connecting
to in the case of user mobility [6]. If for example a vehicle moving at a typical highway
speed such as 100 km/h passes a road-side access point, it is hardly authenticated to
that AP the moment it is already leaving its range.
Apart from the limitations from the MAC layer such as authentication, the physical
layers from standard WLAN are also not designed to handle that much movement. One
of the normal WLAN varieties, 802.11a, uses OFDM (Orthogonal Frequency Division
Multiplexing) which is very good in dispersive, noisy environments but also very sensitive
to Doppler-shift. If no effective countermeasures are taken against it, Doppler shift will
significantly influence the efficiency and throughput of the vehicular network [7, 8].
Altogether many factors have to be considered in a vehicular network that are not that
relevant in normal 802.11 infrastructure or ad-hoc networks.

3 IEEE 802.11 Wireless Networks

In this chapter we will discuss various aspects of the 802.11 wireless networking family
and the required specifics about the MAC and physical layers. Hereby we focus on the
modulation and multiplexing techniques of 802.11a and p (OFDM). Readers already
familiar with the 802.11 MAC layer could probably skip Sections 3.1 and 3.2 about the
MAC layer, CSMA/CA and the hidden terminal problem.

3.1 IEEE 802 Networking

802.11 is the family of wireless networking standards created and published by the IEEE.
Figure 1 shows how 802.11 relates to the other IEEE 802 networking standards, it
basically consists of a new Medium Access Control layer and new physical layers, and
offers an Ethernet-like network over a wireless medium to the higher layers. Note that
802.11 has quite a few different physical layers, they use different modulation techniques
and various frequency bands. The MAC layer is roughly the same for all variations,
however for 802.11p this is also changed to counter some of the issues mentioned in 2.2
related to authentication and association.

4
 802 802.1
802.2 Logical Link Control (LLC)
Overview Management
and
architecture
802.3 802.5
802.11 MAC
MAC MAC

802.3 802.5 802.11 802.11 802.11 802.11 802.11

PHY PHY FHSS PHY DSSS PHY OFDM PHY HR/DSSS ERP PHY

Figure 1: The IEEE 802 family (Source: Figure 2-1 from [9]).

3.2 The 802.11 MAC layer: CSMA/CA and the DCF

Because the wireless medium is a lot different from the wired medium used in for example
802.3 (Ethernet), a new MAC layer needs to be defined to successfully mitigate problems
such as interference, collisions and the increased security vulnerability. Therefore, an
adapted access scheme is used in this MAC layer: CSMA/CA which stands for Carrier
Sense Multiple Access with Collision Avoidance. This access scheme counters at least
some of these problems. It contains a few different coordination functions, among them
the DCF (Distributed Coordination Function). This is the most common one, and is
the one relevant to discuss in this report.
The DCF organizes the access to the medium according to a set of basic rules.
• If the station wants to send a frame, it first senses the channel to see if somebody
else is sending (this is called carrier sensing). If the medium is busy, the station
defers from sending and waits until the medium becomes available again. After the
medium has become available, it waits for a predefined period of time, the DIFS
or Distributed Inter-Frame Space.
• After this DIFS time the station enters a so-called contention window or backoff
window. This is a time window divided in slots. The window size (in number
of slots) depends on previous transmissions, but has a minimum and maximum
defined by the standard. In 802.11p the contention window size is between 15
and 1023 slots and always increments in powers of 2. The station then randomly
chooses a number of slots (within the contention window), that is the number of
time slots it will wait before it actually starts trying to transmit. This means that
if two stations were both waiting for a transmission to end, they will not both
start transmitting directly after the DIFS (and generate a collision). After picking
a random number of slots a backoff timer starts counting down to zero, when it
reaches zero the station can transmit.
• If, while waiting a random number of slots, the station senses another transmission,
because another station was also waiting and picked a random number smaller than
its own, it freezes the backoff timer. Then, after that transmission and a DIFS of
idle time on the medium, it restarts the backoff timer but does not pick a random

5
 Defer access Backoff after defer

Data
Sending station

SIFS

ACK
Receiving station
Contention window
DIFS

Data
Other stations

Figure 2: The IEEE 802 DCF. (Source: Fig 3-7 from [10])

number again. This means that a station which had to wait the first round, has a
higher probability of gaining access first to the medium in the subsequent rounds.
• If the backoff timer reaches zero, the station transmits and the transmission fails
(i.e. no ACK is received), it doubles the contention window size and picks a random
number again. This means that when the number of nodes in the network increases
and the number of collisions increases, stations automatically start waiting longer
and the algorithm remains stable.
• If a station needs to transmit a frame that, in the algorithm, logically follows the
just transmitted frame (such as an ACK frame to indicate correct reception, or
a new data frame if the entire frame is being fragmented), the station does not
have to wait for a DIFS period. Instead, it can start transmitting after a SIFS
period (Short Inter-Frame Space), this guarantees that no other station that is not
involved in the current transmission can seize the medium before it is completed.
In Figure 2 part of the algorithm is shown in action. A sending station starts transmitting
a data packet after waiting a DIFS, the receiving station replies after waiting a SIFS
with an ACK, and after a DIFS and a random backoff period another station that also
wanted to send a frame can start transmitting.
A common problem in the wireless medium is the hidden-terminal problem, shown in
Figure 3. This happens when two nodes both want to transmit but they cannot hear
each other’s transmission. This might happen for many reasons; for example because
there is an obstacle in between, or because they are simply too far apart. It does create a
severe problem though, because in network situations like the one in Figure 3 the carrier
sensing mechanism alone is not enough. If either Node A or C starts transmitting to B
(because it thinks the channel is idle) while the other node is also transmitting, either to
B or to another node in the network, their transmissions will overlap spatially at node
B, causing B to perceive a collision of two signals.
To cope with this hidden terminal problem, the 802.11 DCF includes yet another fea-
ture: so-called RTS/CTS frames or Request-To-Send / Clear-To-Send frames. Using the

6
 A B C

Figure 3: The hidden terminal problem.

standard waiting protocol described above, when a station obtains the medium it doesn’t
start sending its data but instead it first sends a Request-To-Send, a short frame asking
for permission to send, containing basic information like sender, receiver and the length
of the data frame the station wants to transmit. The receiving station then has to reply
with a Clear-To-Send frame, containing the same information. In this case (looking at
Figure 3 again), when A wants to send something to B and sends an RTS and B replies
with a CTS, station C and any other station within transmission range of either A or B
will be notified that the medium will be occupied for the duration defined in the RTS
or CTS frame. Of course, A and C could still send and RTS at the same time that
would collide at B, but then neither A nor C would receive a CTS and they would both
know somebody else is trying to transmit, starting a random backoff procedure. This
mechanism greatly decreases the collision-related throughput loss, especially for large
data frames [9].

3.3 Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing

3.3.1 Introduction to OFDM

The 802.11 variation dedicated to vehicular networking, 802.11p, uses a physical layer
similar to 802.11a with OFDM as the primary multiplexing technique. In this section
we will look into OFDM and describe how it works, so that the concept is clear in the
later sections about 802.11p and Frame Capture (Section 3.4 and Chapter 4).
Normal (single-carrier) modulation techniques use the whole channel and modulate data
onto a signal at a high rate, with one symbol occupying the entire bandwidth for a very
short time. OFDM however divides the channel in many small subcarriers and every
subcarrier is modulated at a much lower rate. In order not to waste too much bandwidth
on guard bands between these subcarriers, their frequencies are chosen in a really smart
way to create orthogonality; without spacing between the carriers they do not interfere
with each other. This of course greatly improves the channel efficiency. In Figure 4 we

7
 Figure 4: Orthogonality of subcarriers in the frequency domain. (Source: [11])

clearly see that at the peak of every subcarrier all other subcarriers are zero, i.e. at
that frequency the other subcarriers do not contribute any energy to the signal. The
orthogonality is crucial to OFDM, if subcarriers are not chosen orthogonal to each other,
they will overlap and interfere significantly.
Apart from the ’multiplexing’ part of OFDM, the individual subcarriers are modulated
to contain the data. Depending on the chosen modulation both amplitude and phase
can vary in an OFDM subcarrier. The frequency however has to remain constant to
preserve the orthogonality.

3.3.2 OFDM Mathematics

In order to explain how these orthogonal subcarriers are exactly generated, we need to
look a little bit into the mathematics behind OFDM. Let’s first look at OFDM in the
time domain:
An OFDM subcarrier is a normal sine wave at a certain frequency, modulated with the
data. As said before the frequency does not change, only the phase and amplitude can be
modulated. Typical modulation schemes that achieve this are Binary and Quaternary
Phase Shift Keying (BPSK & QPSK) or Quadrature Amplitude Modulation (QAM).
These modulations can be described in the complex field as ’constellations’ of points,
where each point is the same sine wave but at a different phase and/or amplitude, and
each point encodes a number of bits. This is illustrated in Figure 5. If the number
of points in the constellation increases, more bits can be mapped onto each point. In
Figure 5(a) for example, there are 2 points; only a 0 and a 1 can be mapped on both
points. In Figure 5(c) there are 16 points and there can be mapped 4 bits onto 1 point
(24 = 16). In the complex field, a vector can be drawn from the origin to the point: the
angle that the vector makes with the x-axis is the phase (ranging from 0 to 360◦ ), and

8
 Q

Q A

I φ I

(a) BPSK constellation (b) Example of BPSK modula- (c) Explanation of the con-
diagram tion stellation

Figure 5: Modulation of OFDM signals

R∞ sin(πf )
−∞ rect(t) · e−i2πf t dt = πf = sinc(f )

(a) Fourier-transform of rectangular window (b) The resulting spectrum

Figure 6: Fourier

the length of the vector is the amplitude.

The desired orthogonality is created by doing two things: carefully choosing the subcar-
rier frequencies and, after summing all the subcarriers, convoluting it with a so-called
rectangular window. A rectangular window is quite a simple signal: it is 1 between − T2
and T2 , 21 at the borders and 0 otherwise. The rectangular window used in OFDM is 1
between 0 and T (shown in Equation 1).


 0 if t < 0 or t > T
rect(t) = 1 if t > 0 and t < T (1)
 1
2 ift = 0 or t = T

This rectangular pulse in the time domain is quite obvious. When Fourier-transforming
this rectangular pulse, we see that the spectrum of this rectangular is a sinc function (as
in Figure 6(a)).
A sinc function looks exactly like one of the carriers in Figure 4, it has a peak at
one specific frequency and is 0 at the center frequencies of the adjacent subcarriers, or
in the time domain, at the nonzero integer values of t. This means that rectangular
pulse in the time domain looks like a sinc function in the frequency domain. Hence, a
modulated signal convoluted with a rectangular pulse of the right width looks exactly

9
like a subcarrier as in Figure 4. This is valid with only one subcarrier, but by choosing
the other subcarriers just the right way (explanation in Appendix A.1), summing them
and after that convoluting them with the rectangular window creates an OFDM signal
(convolution in the time domain is equal to multiplication in the frequency domain). The
frequency difference between the subcarriers needs to be fc = T1 . As an example, T in
802.11a is 3.2µs, this corresponds to 1/3.2 · 10−6 = 312.5 kHz subcarrier spacing.
All the above would result in a spectrum (for 802.11) that looks like Figure 7. At the gaps
in the spectrum are special pilot carriers, used for time and frequency synchronization
purposes.
Center
frequency

-25 -20 -15 -10 -5 0 5 10 15 20 25 Carrier

number

Figure 7: 802.11 OFDM channel structure (Source: Figure 13-8 from [9]).

So in short: all subcarriers of an OFDM signal simultaneously transfer a number of bits.

The number of bits per symbol depends on the subcarrier modulation. The symbol rate
of the subcarriers themselves is low, but because OFDM uses many subcarriers the total
data rate is equal to a single-carrier system.

3.3.3 Guard times, coding and forward error correction

There are many types of interference and disturbances which can disrupt or destroy a
signal in the wireless medium. Two of them are ISI and ICI, or Inter-Symbol- and Inter-
Carrier-Interference. ISI is the phenomenon that two adjacent symbols interfere with
each other; this is caused by multipath propagation or frequency delays which disrupt the
receiver’s timing synchronization. ICI is caused when (perhaps in a narrow part of the
frequency band) the carrier frequency shifts a little bit. This disrupts the orthogonality
of the subcarriers and causes energy of one subcarrier to leak into another. This can be
caused for example by Doppler shift, which can be a serious problem in OFDM.
To counter ISI, every OFDM symbol starts with a guard time; this is a small portion of
the symbol time. The symbol time is divided in the guard time and the FFT integration
time (also shown in Figure 8). This is important because multipath delay can cause
various ’copies’ of the original symbol to arrive at the receiver, also called different
signal components. These components are generated by reflection of the signal against
buildings, metal structures and other big objects. The Line-Of-Sight (LOS) component
is the part of the signal that arrives directly at the receiver, and usually at various
delays one or more multipath components show up, at a lower amplitude than the LOS
component. If because of multipath delay a part of the previous symbol arrives during
the guard time, this doesn’t interfere with the symbol itself. This is only true however

10
 Guard time FFT integration time

Subcarrier 1

Delay
Subcarrier 2

Previous
symbol

Figure 8: Cyclic prefix extension (Source: Figure 13-6 from [9])

if the guard time is chosen such that it is bigger than the biggest reasonably expected
multipath delay. The multipath components do not cause variations in the frequency,
so the orthogonality is still preserved. However to preserve the orthogonality of the
signal the receiver must have an integer number of cycles in the FFT integration time.
This integer number is needed because the Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) works with
discrete samples drawn from the signal, not the original signal itself. If in the FFT
integration time there is not an entire cycle (360◦ in the complex field) or an integer
multiple of that, the sampling stops at some signal value and the next sampled value
(belonging to the next symbol) will differ greatly. This results in discontinuities in the
signal, and this changes the perceived frequency of the subcarrier. This in turn destroys
the orthogonality [9].
To prevent destroying the orthogonality, whatever is transmitted during the guard time
should have the same frequency as the symbol itself. In that case when the signal shifts
a bit over time, the FFT integration time still contains a nice (integer multiple of cycles)
part of the signal. To achieve this the transmitter sends the last part of the symbol itself
during the guard time (see Figure 8). This is called cyclic prefix extension. Also, in
situations where there is no LOS component, the OFDM receiver could in the best case
still figure out based on a multipath component what the original symbol was.
In order to further increase robustness of the signal against severe channel conditions,
a typical OFDM transmitter also adds coding to the data. This is strictly not part of
OFDM, but very common to use. The coding enables Forward Error Correction (FEC)
at the receiver; with FEC a receiver can detect and correct errors without requiring
retransmission. The encoder expands the original data bitstream, thereby adding re-
dundancy. How much redundancy is added, is given by the coding rate, for 802.11 this
varies between 1/2 and 3/4. A coding rate of 1/2 means that every original data bit
is replaced with 2 coded bits. There are many different coding algorithms which vary
in complexity, the one that is used in 802.11 is a so-called convolutional encoder. A
convolutional encoder works on a continuous stream of bits; it takes m bits as input and

11
produces n output bits, where the coding rate is m/n. It uses a transformation function
that has a shift register with the last 7 input bits. On every step it computes n output
bits based on the 7 bits in the register, and m bits in the register are replaced with
new input bits. An example of a small convolutional encoder (with only 3 bits in the
register) is given in Figure 9. In this encoder the values in the registers are summed to
create the various output bits. The way the register bits are combined (or the generator
polynomials for the various output bits) is critical to the error-correction properties of
the encoder, they vary depending on the coding rate and the number of registers (or
constraint length).

Figure 9: An example of a convolutional encoder with 1 input bit, 3 output bits and 3
bits in the register.

One can understand that using such an encoder, an input bit kind of ’spreads’ itself over
time, as it is still present in the shift register a few computation rounds later. Depending
on the generator polynomials, a certain string of input bits of arbitrary length will always
generate the same output bits. Therefore when decoding, depending on the incoming
bitstream, a decoder can find out what the original data bits were. 802.11 recommends
a so-called decoder which uses the Viterbi-algorithm, which is a maximum-likelihood
decoder. If bit errors occur, the Viterbi algorithm outputs the most likely sequence of
data bits, depending on the encoding and the occurrences of the bit errors. [9, 12]
One last smart thing that the OFDM transmitter does is interleaving: it spreads the
coded bits over all subcarriers (1 bit at carrier 1, next bit at carrier 2, next at carrier
3 and so on), so that in the case of narrowband interference the bit errors are spread
over the input bit stream. The probability of multiple bit errors close together (after de-
interleaving) decreases, and if the decoded bits have errors, they can be more easily be
corrected by CRC checks at the MAC layer. The receiver thus has a higher probability
of finding the right data bits based on the encoded bits.

3.3.4 Strengths and weaknesses of OFDM

The multiplexing scheme used in OFDM has a few significant advantages over the single-
carrier schemes used for instance in 802.11b. All the small subcarriers together generate

12
 Transmitter

FEC Interleaving, Guard

I-Q
(Convolution mapping, and IFFT interval HPA
modulation
encoder) pilot insertion insertion

Receiver

Guard Pilot remove,

I-Q FEC
LNA AGC interval FFT deinterleaving,
demodulation decoder
removal and demapping

Figure 10: An OFDM Transceiver block diagram (Source: Figure 13-17 of [9])

a very flat, evenly distributed spectrum. The spectral efficiency is high; subcarriers are
orthogonal to each other and placed very closely together. The various protection mech-
anisms make the signal very robust to narrowband interference and multipath fading,
and ISI is effectively countered by the cyclic prefix extension (given that the delays are
not much longer than the guard time), while the efficiency loss caused by this cyclic
prefix is acceptable because of the low symbol rate. Another advantage is that OFDM
can be implemented in transmitters and receivers using relatively simple components,
no advanced equalization circuits are needed.
There are also disadvantages however; because of the dependence on orthogonality an
OFDM channel is very sensitive to carrier- and Doppler shifts. Also, summing of all the
independent subcarriers may create a signal with some high (amplitude) peaks, which
causes a high Peak-to-Average-Power-Ratio or PAPR. This increases the complexity at
the transmitter, since practical power amplifiers (PA’s) have a range at which they are
linear (i.e. linearly amplifying the signal), and another part (near saturation) where they
are non-linear. If the amplification is non-linear, this changes the form of the received
signal at the receiver and thus increases bit errors [13, 14].

3.3.5 OFDM Transmission and Reception blocks

This section shows transmitter and receiver blocks for typical OFDM chipsets, and
explains some of the steps that a transmitter goes through when transmitting data.
When looking at Figure 10, an OFDM transmitter does the following steps when trans-
mitting (note that some of these steps are specific to 802.11) [9]:
1. Transmission rate selection. This depends on the channel conditions but is chipset-
implementation dependent. The rate does dictate however which modulation is
used and which coding rate. Together the modulation and coding rate determine

13
 how many bits are transmitted per symbol. Table 1 contains an overview of the
used combinations.
2. Transmission of the PLCP preamble (at a fixed rate of 1 Mbps), these are a few
long and short symbols to train the receiver and enable frequency synchronization.
3. Transmission of the PLCP header, also at 1 Mbps, which contains info about the
frame that is about to be transmitted (frame length, encoding, transmission rate
that will be used).
4. Creation of the data packet itself: some protocol-specific fields are added, the data
is scrambled to prevent long sequences of zeros or ones and some padding bits are
added. This data is encoded using the convolutional encoder.
5. Division of the coded bits into blocks (depending on the number of bits per OFDM
symbol) to perform the interleaving process.
6. Pilot subcarrier insertion and using the IFFT or Inverse Fast Fourier Transform
to generate the data signals.
7. Modulation of the subcarriers with the data signals using I-Q modulation. This
modulation type is how QAM and QPSK signals are generated, for more informa-
tion readers are referred to Chapters 9-5 and 9-6 of [15].
8. Amplification of the entire signal in an High-Power Amplifier (HPA) for transmis-
sion over the antenna.
When a frame is being received, the signal is first amplified using a Low-Noise Amplifier
(LNA), and Automatic Gain Control (AGC) is applied to get the signal to the (standard)
power levels needed for demodulation. The rest of the reception process is basically the
reverse of the sending process, as can be seen in Figure 10.

Table 1: 801.11 data rates and modulations / coding rates [9]

Transmission Modulation Coding Coded bits Coded bits Data bits per
rate (Mbps) rate per carrier per symbol symbol
6 BPSK 1/2 1 48 24
9 BPSK 3/4 1 48 36
12 QPSK 1/2 2 96 48
18 QPSK 3/4 2 96 72
24 16-QAM 1/2 4 192 96
36 16-QAM 3/4 4 192 144
48 64-QAM 2/3 6 288 192
54 64-QAM 3/4 6 288 216

14
3.4 IEEE standard draft: 802.11p

In an attempt to solve the problems described in Chapter 2, an IEEE working group

is currently creating an amendment to the 802.11 standard. It will specify many of the
needed adaptations, one of the main new concepts they introduced is called WAVE (or
Wireless Access in Vehicular Environments). The amendment carries the name 802.11p.
The standard is still in the draft phase, but has been under development since 2006 and
should be completed in the fourth quarter of 2010. The next passage provides a short
overview of the new functionality and behavioral changes:
An STA (Station) can operate in WAVE mode, and when it does it can send messages
to any other STA in WAVE mode with a valid MAC address, including group addresses,
without first joining a BSS. If communication with a DS (Distribution System, a fixed
road-side network) is necessary, stations can also join a WBSS (WAVE Basic Service
Set). Authentication or association is not required in WAVE mode, only the first step
(joining the BSS) has to be performed. After that, data is sent data directly to the DS
[16].
The physical layer is also adapted for increased movement in 802.11p. The frequency
band at which it will operate is probably in the 5.9 GHz ITS channel in the US, this band
has been designated by the FCC for use by Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS). The
European telecommunications authority, the CEPT, has designated a similar frequency
spectrum after extensive studies [17, 18].
To counter the increased vulnerability of 802.11p (also see Section 3.3.4), such as the
increased amount of Doppler shift due to movement, some physical layer parameters are
changed in the 802.11p standard. One 802.11a OFDM channel uses 52 subcarriers out
of which 48 are used to transmit data and 4 are pilot carriers. 802.11p uses the same
number of subcarriers, but uses a smaller bandwidth per channel; 10 MHz opposed to 20
MHz in 802.11a. This also means that all parameters in the time domain (guard time,
symbol time) are doubled compared to 802.11a. This has as a result that Doppler spread
decreases (due to the smaller frequency bandwidth), inter-symbol interference is also
decreased due to the higher guard times. These doubled parameters in the time domain
halve the effective data rate (3 to 27 Mbps against 6 to 54 in 802.11a) [19]. The standard
also specifies more stringent ACR (Adjacent Channel Rejection) requirements, because
the guard bands between channels are smaller. Table 2 contains a small comparison of
various 802.11a and p PHY parameters.

4 Frame Capture

The phenomenon that this report focuses on is the so-called capture effect. It is also
referred to as Physical Layer Capture (or PLC), or Frame Capture (FC). This chapter
will further elaborate on it: what is it exactly, in which situations does it occur and

15
 Table 2: 802.11a and 802.11p PHY values [2]

Parameter 802.11p 802.11a

Channel bandwidth 10 MHz 20 MHz
Data rates 3 to 27 Mbps 6 to 54 Mbps
Slot time 16 µs 9 µs
SIFS time 32 µs 16 µs
Preamble length 32 µs 20 µs
PLCP header length 8 µs 4 µs
Air propagation time < 4 µs << 1 µs
CWmin 15 15
CWmax 1023 1023

what happens exactly at the hardware level?

4.1 What is FC?

Frame Capture occurs at the physical layer of 802.11 networks. Depending on chipset
designs it might occur in other types of networks as well, but this was no part of our
investigation. It has already been observed and investigated in many different papers
[20, 21, 22, 23, 24], mostly for 802.11a. [20] discusses the implied unfairness and that
closer nodes can effectively ’capture’ the channel if their signal is sufficiently stronger.
[21] describes various ways to model the problem. [23] performs real experiments with
802.11a testbeds and [22] only simulations. However, none of these were specific to
802.11p or vehicular networking, they mostly focus on the basic phenomenon.
Frame Capture occurs (under some conditions) when two transmissions overlap spatially.
Normally the 802.11 coordination function (CSMA/CA, also see Section 3.2) prevents
most collisions by implementing RTS/CTS and random backoff mechanisms. However,
in safety-oriented VANET applications most traffic will very likely be broadcast traf-
fic, which is sent without a prior RTS/CTS handshake and without acknowledgments.
Therefore, collisions are much more likely to occur.
If at a given node two signals arrive simultaneously, this would normally be regarded
as a collision and both packets would be assumed lost. The last few years however it
appeared that this is not the way most 802.11 chipsets handle a collision: under some
circumstances one of the packets is being received correctly even if another transmission
is occurring simultaneously [25, 26]. This phenomenon of being able to receive a frame
even in the presence of another frame is called Frame Capture. It is quite dependent on
chipset design; ultimately the chipset makes the decision to try and start demodulating a
different (stronger) signal when the interference on the current signal becomes too strong.
However, currently most network simulators do not take this behavior into account (see

16
also Chapter 5); but experiments point out that under some network circumstances the
difference in throughput can be substantial [27].
FC can occur in many different situations, and there are many variables which influence
the behavior (and possible outcome). If two frames are being transmitted simultaneously,
the following factors are important:
• Exact time of arrival
The exact time difference between the arrivals of two colliding frames is an impor-
tant factor. The timing difference we talk about here is in the order of microsec-
onds. If the medium is busy the CSMA/CA mechanism implies a slot synchroniza-
tion which will cause the frames to arrive more or less at the same moment. How-
ever in the hidden terminal situation a colliding frame could arrive at any moment
during reception, because a hidden node that doesn’t sense ongoing transmissions
is allowed to start sending at any moment.
• Signal strength
Apart from the timing, one of the two signals has to be sufficiently stronger than
the other for the receiver to be able to decode it even in presence of the interference
of the weaker signal. If both signals are equal in RSS (Receiver Signal Strength),
it really depends on the chipset whether it is able to decode either one of them.
Also, the required difference in RSS depends on the timing relation. If the stronger
frame arrives before the weaker frame, the stronger frame will probably be received
normally, and the required SIR difference is quite small. If one of the two frames
interferes with the other one’s preamble (which is an important phase of the re-
ception process: during the preamble the receiver tries to lock onto the signal),
the required difference in RSS is a lot higher because it is harder for the receiver
to correctly lock onto one of the signals.
• Chipset manufacturer
It appears that even chipsets from different manufacturers behave differently under
the above mentioned timing relation. In a Prism chipset [28] for example, the effect
only occurs if the second, stronger frame arrives before or during the first frame’s
preamble. However in Atheros chipsets [29] capturing a stronger frame will occur
also after the reception of the weaker frame’s preamble (i.e. almost independent
of the timing relation between the two arriving frames [30, 26]).

4.2 Scenario classifications

Based on literature [21, 23, 25, 27], we have distinguished the following relevant scenar-
ios where 2 frames arrive almost simultaneously at the receiver. In this classification
overview we assume that when we have two frames (F1 and F2 ) and that F1 is always
the strongest. All scenarios where F2 would be stronger always have their equivalents in
Table 3 below.

17
In advance it is impossible to say which of the two frames is the desired one, so we just
assume that the stronger frame is the one we want to receive. We cannot make this
distinction based on the content of the frames, but receiving the stronger frame is also
desirable because a stronger SIR means a lower bit-error rate (BER), which increases
correct packet reception probability. In a vehicular networking context, receiving the
strongest frame is strongly related to receiving the frame of the nearest vehicle. This
is also a desirable feature, because the nearest neighboring vehicles pose the greatest
’threat’ to the vehicle itself; safety messages like emergency braking and other problems
should really be received first. It is thus quite reasonable to assume that we want to
receive the strongest frame.
Table 3 illustrates the FC scenarios with different timing and SIR situations. ∆t is the
exact difference between the arrival times (in µs), Lpreamble is the length of the frame’s
preamble (32µs in 802.11p), and the SIR (Signal to Interference Ratio) is RSSF 1 −
RSSF 2 . As said, in all cases RSSF 1 > RSSF 2 .

Table 3: Frame Capture scenarios (data rate of 6 Mbps). These timing relations and
results are for Atheros chipsets [23]. The experiments were performed with 802.11a.
Timing relation Result

P Frame 1 Frame 1 is captured if

1. ∆t > Lpreamble
P Frame 2 SIR > ∼ 0 dB

P Frame 1 Frame 1 is captured if

2. ∆t < Lpreamble
P Frame 2 SIR > ∼ 12 dB

P Frame 1 Frame 1 is captured if

3. ∆t < Lpreamble
P Frame 2 SIR > ∼ 12 dB

∆t > Lpreamble , receiver P Frame 1 Frame 1 is captured if

4.
locked on to Frame 2 P Frame 2 SIR > ∼ 10 dB

Frame 1 might be
captured, but SIR
∆t > Lpreamble , receiver P Frame 1 should be at least ∼20
5. NOT locked on to dB. Probability
P Frame 2
Frame 2 increases linearly as
SIR increases.

Basically Table 3 tells us the following: a stronger frame can always be captured (and
thus received correctly if no other interferers arrive) in the presence of another frame,
if the SIR of the stronger frame is high enough. The required SIR is higher if ∆t is
less than Lpreamble , because the frame’s preamble is an important phase of the carrier

18
detection and lock-on process. If the receiver is locked on to the weaker frame, it is a
bit easier to receive a stronger frame if it arrives, because the ability to receive a signal
means that the receiver is better able to suppress it as well [24].
Figure 11 from [23] shows the required SIR in more detail. It shows the FRR (Frame
Reception Ratio) on the y-axis for various SIR values and for various situations. In
these experiments a testbed was created with a receiver, two senders (one normal sender
and an interferer) who cannot hear each other, and two extra receivers to monitor the
two senders and get exact timings on the sent frames (see also Figure 1 in [23]). When
experimenting with the induced collisions at the receiver, the authors make three dis-
tinctions; Sender First (SF) capture, Sender Last&Interferer Clear capture (SLC) and
Sender Last&Interferer Garbled (SLG) capture. The Sender in this case is the sender of
the desired frame, the other sender acts as an interferer. In the SF case the strongest
frame arrives first (corresponding to Scenario 1 and 2 in Table 3), in the SLC case the
strongest frame arrives second while the receiver is decoding the weaker frame (Scenario
3 and 4), and in the SLG case the strongest frame arrives second while the receiver is,
for any reason, not decoding the weaker frame (Scenario 5). The capture probability
depends a lot on the data rate of the stronger frame, but at 6 Mbps in the SF case almost
all frames can be captured even if the SIR is around 0 dB (both frames equal in signal
strength). For higher data rates the required SIR also increases. It is clear to see that
in the SLC case the required SIR is a lot higher, but does not change much if the data
rate increases - only at the highest data rates does the required SIR also increase. If the
receiver is not locked on to the weaker frame (or ’interference’), the data rate becomes
even less important - in the presence of the interfering signal energy, the desired signal
must simply be strong enough to be received. For a reasonable Frame Reception Ratio
(80 %) the SIR needs to be around 20-22 dB.
It is also important to note that there are two different thresholds:
• The capture threshold. The SIR of an arriving frame that determines if the receiver
drops the current frame and starts locking on the new frame
• The required SIR during the entire transmission. This one is different from the
first one because it is bitrate-dependent.
The decision to capture a frame is made based on the signal power of the newly arriving
frame. If it is high enough, the receiver might start preamble detection and all might
go well, but then during the PLCP header reception the bitrate of the rest of the frame
becomes known. It might thus happen that a receiver correctly locks onto the frame but
after receiving the PLCP header the bitrate at which the frame is sent appears to be too
high and the MAC CRC check at the end of the frame reception process fails. Hence, a
correct capture decision based on the SIR during preamble and PLCP header does not
necessarily mean that the frame will also be received correctly.

19
 (a) SF (Sender First) case (b) SLC (Sender Last, Clear interference)
case

(c) SLG (Sender Last, Garbled interference)

case

Figure 11: Required SIR for various FC scenarios. (Source: Figure 7 of [23])

4.3 802.11p scenario predictions

An important problem we need to take into account is that the above illustrated sce-
narios are all based on literature experimenting with 802.11a wireless network setups,
and as described in Table 2 and Chapter 3, some physical layer parameters in 802.11p
are different from 802.11a. A very important question that rises thus is whether the
frame capture scenarios in 802.11a also apply to 802.11p. The changes have influence of
course on the reliability of the signal under harsh channel environments, but does it also
influence the behavior of a chipset when two frames collide, or when it makes a capture
decision?
To answer this, we need to closely look at the OFDM symbols, how they react to inter-
ference and what happens if two OFDM symbols arrive simultaneously at the receiver.
The 802.11p channel bandwidth is halved, but so is the data rate so the amount of trans-
mitted information per Hz (or information rate) of the channel is the same. The way the
symbols are modulated is also exactly the same, as described in Section 3.3. The same
subcarrier modulations are used as well as the same combinations of modulation and
coding rates. Depending on the signal strength of the interfering signal, the reception of
the OFDM symbol is disturbed because energy not belonging to the original symbol is
being received. Thinking again of the modulation constellations in Figure 5, interference
will add extra energy to the original signal, changing the amplitude (either with con-

20
structive or destructive interference) and changing the perceived phase of the signal. In
Figure 12 one can see various types of noise superimposed on a 16-QAM constellation.
Phase noise (a slight distortion of the phase of the original signal) causes the point in
the constellation to shift either clockwise or counterclockwise on a circle. White noise
(also called AWGN, or Additive White Gaussian Noise) is usually everywhere on the
spectrum, can be any phase and is normally of a very low amplitude, so it shows as a
’rotating pointer’ superimposed on the original constellation point. If no other interfer-
ers are present, the received constellation point can be anywhere inside the white noise
circle.
Q Q Q

I I I

(a) An ideal constellation (b) Phase noise (c) White noise

Figure 12: Various noise types superimposed on a 16-QAM constellation.

In the case of interference from other (non-802.11) transmitters or white noise, the only
relevant variable is the noise power. The source of the energy can of course also be
noise or other transmitters (not necessarily 802.11) in the same frequency band, so the
possible modulation and data rate of an interfering signal is not relevant to the reception
probability of the signal itself.
Another very important factor in the Frame Capture behavior is the chipset design.
Ultimately it is the chipset that, when detecting an energy increase above a certain
level, decides that it drops the current frame and starts locking on the newly arrived
frame, taking eventual bit errors for granted. A chipset can decide to keep demodulating
a weaker frame, but depending on the RSS of the interference this frame will without a
doubt contain so many bit errors that the frame can be discarded altogether. We have
also seen the variance in capture behavior among different chipsets in Section 4.1. If
we assume the same chipset design for 802.11p, it is fair to assume that it will exhibit
the same behavior as it did in 802.11a, given that the circumstances are equal (such as
timing and RSS). It will therefore also make the same capture decisions.
There are a few small differences between 802.11a and p frames however. For example
the preamble of an 802.11p frame is a lot longer. This is shown in Figure 13, where ’P’
is the preamble and ’H’ is the PLCP header.
The preamble is an important phase of the reception process. A receiver does the
following during the preamble:
1. It detects and measures the signal power; this signal power has to be greater than

21
 µs 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 110
P H 802.11p frame
P H 802.11a frame

Figure 13: Comparison between the first parts of typical 802.11a and p frames

or equal to RXSens, which is the receiver’s minimum coding and demodulation

sensitivity. Any signals with a power level below this threshold will be considered
as noise. RXSens for Atheros chipsets is around -88 dBm. [27, 26]
2. It performs automatic gain control (AGC) during which it sets the LNA (low-noise
amplifier, see Figure 10) to a level appropriate for the received signal power. This
happens because a signal when it arrives at the receiver is very weak; it needs
to amplified before further processing (while preferably the noise is not further
amplified).
3. It performs frequency synchronization using a Phase-Locked Loop (PLL). For de-
tails on how a PLL works, review Chapter 3-7 of [15].
4. It performs time synchronization [27].
The normally observed arrival time differences in a contended medium are between 0 and
20 µs at the receiver due to RX/TX turnaround time delay and inherent uncertainties
in the 802.11 firmware clock synchronization. However as said before, in the hidden
terminal situation a new frame might arrive at any time during the ongoing frame
reception. The larger preamble in 802.11p will make thus a bit more probable that two
frames are interfering in each other’s preamble (Scenario 2 and 3 of Table 3). Also note
that this does not say anything about the behavior of the chipset under collisions, just
that these scenarios will occur more often [27, 30].
Given the fact that the shapes of the signals of 802.11a and p are equal with just different
timing parameters, it is fair to conclude that given the same chipset design, the capture
behavior will not change: the receiver will use the same thresholds to decide if the
additional energy detected during frame reception is belonging to another, stronger signal
and is worth capturing or not. The bit-error rate of the received frames could change
of course, but the modulation, multiplexing scheme and the amount of information per
Hz of bandwidth are the same, so this will depend more on other factors related to
the channel conditions than on the used modulation. Of course the channel conditions
will be different in 802.11p compared to a, so these channel conditions also have to be
considered in our simulations.

22
5 Potential impact of FC on vehicular networks

The simulations we will perform later will be mainly focused on the potential impact
of FC. VANETs are networks with an extremely high degree of mobility. The type of
traffic in a VANET will largely depend on the implementations of safety applications
on a higher layer, but we expect that a large portion of the traffic in a VANET will be
broadcast traffic, because independent of the application it is reasonable to assume that
safety information should be disseminated as much as possible over the network and
broadcast traffic achieves this information dissemination a lot faster than unicast traffic
([31] for example proposes a smart network flooding mechanism to distribute traffic
information).
It is this broadcast traffic scenario that we are interested in. Because of the design of the
802.11a and p MAC layers, broadcast frames are not transmitted using the RTS/CTS
mechanism and no acknowledgment is sent after reception. Also, depending on the type
of information transmitted and the safety-application at a higher layer, these broad-
cast messages may be retransmitted for dissemination beyond the original transmitter’s
range. If the real-world congestion increases (more cars), the same might also happen
with the network congestion (more frames are transmitted so the load on the network
increases), up to a point where collisions occur on a regular basis. For this high network
load scenario it is very interesting to know if Frame Capture has a significant effect on
network throughput. Simulations demonstrating Frame Capture have been done, but
mostly with infrastructure networks and not all network simulators currently support
Frame Capture or it is implemented in a way which doesn’t reflect all possible scenarios
identified. One paper shows that ns-2 only captures a stronger frame if it arrives first at
the receiver, and they show with experiments that Prism chipsets also capture a frame
if it arrives during the weaker frames’ preamble [30]. Another paper expands this by
showing that with different chipsets (Atheros) the capture behavior is again different,
also capturing stronger frames which arrive at any time during a weaker frames’ recep-
tion [23]. Both only experiment with infrastructure networks however. There have been
efforts to implement Frame Capture in ns-2 and QualNet, the results of this are shown
in [30, 32]. However for the simulator we prefer to use, OMNeT++, nothing has been
done that we’re aware of yet. Some performed simulations indicate a substantial TCP
throughput increase (up to 430%, based on various physical layer models [25]). In [32]
the ns-2 simulator is updated and also put to the test in a VANET context, but only as a
support to show an implementation of FC in ns-2. The authors demonstrate that there
is a lot to gain when correctly modeling the physical layer, so for VANET simulations
is OMNeT++ implementing this behavior is an important task. We thus suspect that
Frame Capture throughput gain might be equally or even more beneficial to vehicular
networks, due to the increased amount of broadcast traffic.

23
6 Conclusion

In this report we have discussed the basics of the 802.11 MAC and PHY layers. We
specifically had a look at 802.11a and 802.11p because of their similarity and because
802.11p is the standard currently under development for vehicular networks. We per-
formed a literature study to gain as much knowledge as currently available on Frame
Capture, a phenomenon where under some circumstances 802.11 chipsets can receive a
frame even during a collision. We looked in detail into OFDM and the mathematics
behind it, in order to make a reasonable prediction on when capture decisions are made
in a chipset and what the effect will be on the reception of a frame. We concluded that
because 802.11a and p have almost equally designed PHY layers and the information
rate per Hz of bandwidth is the same, the changes at the PHY layer (halved bandwidth,
doubled symbol- and guard time) and the changes to the shape of the signal will not
affect the behavior of an 802.11 chipset. Required SIRs found in literature describing FC
for 802.11a are thus still valid, although the differences in channel conditions will in real
life change the BER of the received and captured frames. The capture decision behavior
itself will remain the same. We note however that the chipset design is of great influence
to this capture behavior, and for our future simulations we will confine ourselves to the
behavior of the Atheros chipset as it is described in literature. It is reasonable to assume
that not much will change when implementing 802.11p based on a current (802.11a)
Atheros chipset.

6.1 Master’ thesis lookahead

We have clearly laid out the different parameters we have to incorporate in our model,
have compared 802.11a to 802.11p and demonstrated how Frame Capture will most
probably behave in an 802.11p environment. To conclude this report, we can look ahead
to outline our future research. After all, the work in this article only contains the basic
groundwork we can now use for further research.
Our research questions, including possible directions to take, are the following:
• How do we correctly model and implement FC behavior in our simulator of choice,
OMNeT++?
• Does FC increase throughput in an ad-hoc 802.11p vehicular environment? In
what way does the road traffic density influence this?
• Which types of network traffic and traffic flows can we expect? Does FC positively
influence the desired behavior given these network traffic flows?
• How does the type of traffic (unicast / broadcast / perhaps various types of flows)
influence the throughput?

24
References

[1] Ozan K. Tonguz and Mate Boban, “Multiplayer games over vehicular ad-hoc net-
works: A new application”, Elsevier Ad Hoc Networks, January 2010.
[2] Marc Torrent Moreno, Inter-vehicle communications: achieving safety in a dis-
tributed wireless environment, PhD thesis, Universität Karlsruhe, 2007.
[3] Ministerie van Verkeer en Waterstaat, Kennisinstituut voor Mobiliteitsbeleid, “Mo-
biliteitsbalans 2009”, http://www.verkeerenwaterstaat.nl/kennisplein/3/8/
387913/Mobiliteitsbalans_2009.pdf, June 2009.
[4] Atulya Mahajan, Niranjan Potnis, Kartik Gopalan, and An-I A. Wang, “Urban
mobility models for VANETs”, in International Workshop on Next Generation
Wireless Networks, 2006.
[5] Marco Fiore, “Vehicular mobility models”, in Vehicular Networks, Stephan Olariu
and Michele C. Weigle, Eds., chapter 12. Chapman & Hall/CRC, 2009.
[6] David Murray, Michael Dixon, and Terry Koziniec, “Scanning delays in 802.11
networks”, in NGMAST ’07: Proceedings of the The 2007 International Conference
on Next Generation Mobile Applications, Services and Technologies, Washington,
DC, USA, 2007, pp. 255–260, IEEE Computer Society.
[7] Ian Tan, Wanbin Tang, Ken Laberteaux, and Ahmad Bahai, “Measurement and
analysis of wireless channel impairments in DSRC vehicular communications”, in
IEEE International Conference on Communications, 2008.
[8] Patrick Robertson and Stefan Kaiser, “The effects of Doppler spreads in OFDM(A)
mobile radio systems”, 1999, vol. 1, pp. 329 –333 vol.1.
[9] Matthew S. Gast, 802.11 Wireless Networks, O’Reilly, 2nd edition, 2008.
[10] Daniel Minoli, Hotspot Networks: Wi-Fi for Public Access Locations, McGraw-Hill
Professional, 2002.
[11] Gaddi Blumrosen, “The future of WiMAX”, http://www.thefutureofthings.
com/articles/6361/the-future-of-wimax.html, February 2009.
[12] Charan Langton, “Coding and decoding with convolutional codes”, http:
//complextoreal.com/chapters/convo.pdf.
[13] Christoph Sonntag, “Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) imple-
mentation as part of a software defined radio (SDR) environment”, Master’s thesis,
University of Stellenbosch, 2005.
[14] Steve Halford and Karen Halford, “OFDM Architecture and Design Challenges”,
http://www.commsdesign.com, May 2002.

25
[15] Wayne Tomasi, Electronic Communications Systems: fundamentals through ad-
vanced, Prentice Hall, 5th edition, 2004.
[16] Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), “IEEE Draft Standard for
Information Technology - Part 11: Wireless LAN Medium Access Control (MAC)
and Physical Layer (PHY) specifications - Amendment 7: Wireless Access in Ve-
hicular Environments - D3.0”, July 2007.
[17] European Conference of Postal and Telecommunications Administrations,
“CEPT/ECC decision of on the harmonised use of the 5875-5925 MHz frequency
band for Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS)”, http://www.erodocdb.dk/Docs/
doc98/official/pdf/ECCDEC0801.PDF, March 2008.
[18] “COMeSafety: Communications for eSafety”, http://www.comesafety.org.
[19] Lothar Stibor, Yunpeng Zang, and Hans-Jürgen Reumerman, “Neighborhood eval-
uation of vehicular ad-hoc networks using 802.11p”, in 13th European Wireless
Conference, 2007.
[20] Christopher Ware, John Judge, Joe Chicharo, and Eryk Dutkiewicz, “Unfairness
and capture behavior in 802.11 ad-hoc networks.”, in IEEE International Confer-
ence on Communications, 2000, vol. 1.
[21] Christopher Ware, Joe Chicharo, and Tadeusz Wysocki, “Modeling of capture
behavior in IEEE 802.11 radio modems”, in IEEE International Conference on
Telecommunications, 2001.
[22] Hoon Chang, Vishal Misra, and Dan Rubenstein, “A general model and analysis of
physical layer capture in 802.11 networks”, in IEEE Infocom Proceedings, 2006.
[23] Jeongkeun Lee, Wonho Kim, Sung-Ju Lee, Daehyung Jo, Jiho Ryu, Taekyoung
Kwon, and Yanghee Choi, “An experimental study on the capture effect in 802.11a
networks”, in WinTech, 2007.
[24] Naveen Santhapuri, Justin Manweiler, Souvik Sen, Romit Roy Choudhury, Srihari
Nelakuduti, and Kamesh Munagala, “Message in message (MIM): A case for re-
ordering transmissions in wireless networks”, in ACM SIGCOMM HotNets (Hot
Topics in Networks), 2008.
[25] Jeongkeun Lee, Jiho Ryu, Sung-Jun Lee, and Taekyoung Kwon, “Simulating the
802.11a PHY model: how to make it accurate”, ACM, 2008.
[26] Jeongkeun Lee, Jiho Ryu, Sung-Jun Lee, and Taekyoung Kwon, “Revamping the
IEEE 802.11a PHY simulation models”, in MSWiM ’08. 2008, ACM.
[27] Jeongkeun Lee, Jiho Ryu, Sung-Ju Lee, and Taekyoung Kwon, “Improved modeling
of ieee 802.11a PHY through fine-grained measurements”, Computer Networks,
2009.
[28] “Conexant”, http://www.conexant.com.

26
[29] “Atheros Communications”, http://www.atheros.com.
[30] Andrzej Kochut, Arunchandar Vasan, A. Udaya Shankar, and Ashok Agrawala,
“Sniffing out the correct Physical Layer Capture model in 802.11b.”, in ICNP: 12th
International Conference on Network Protocols, 2004.
[31] E. Martijn van Eenennaam, “Providing over-the-horizon awareness to driver sup-
port systems by means of multi-hop vehicle-to-vehicle communication”, Master’s
thesis, Design And Analysis of Communication Systems, University of Twente, De-
cember 2008.
[32] Qi Chen, Felix Schmidt-Eisenlohr, Daniel Jiang, Marc Torrent-Moreno, Luca Del-
grossi, and Hannes Hartenstein, “Overhaul of IEEE 802.11 modeling and simulation
in ns-2”, in MSWiM ’07: Proceedings of the 10th ACM Symposium on Modeling,
analysis, and simulation of wireless and mobile systems. 2007, pp. 159–168, ACM.
[33] A. Köpke, M. Swigulski, K. Wessel, D. Willkomm, P.T. Klein Haneveld, T.E.V.
Parker, O.W. Visser, H.S. Lichte, and S. Valentin, “Simulating wireless and mobile
networks in OMNeT++: The MiXiM vision”, 2008.
[34] Krishna Sankar, “Minimum frequency spacing for having or-
thogonal sinusoidals”, http://www.dsplog.com/2007/12/31/
minimum-frequency-spacing-for-having-orthogonal-sinusoidals, December
2007.
[35] Federal Communications Commission, “FCC Rule 90 Subpart M
- Intelligent Transportation Systems Radio Service (Parts 90.371 to
90.383)”, http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CFR-2009-title47-vol5/pdf/
CFR-2009-title47-vol5-part90.pdf.
[36] Glenn Judd and Peter Steenkiste, “Understanding link-level 802.11 behavior: re-
placing convention with measurement”, in WICON, 2007.
[37] David Kotz, Calvin Newport, Robert S. Gray, Jason Liu, Yougu Yuan, and Chip
Elliott, “Experimental evaluation of wireless simulation assumptions”, in MSWiM,
2004.
[38] Harshal S. Chhaya and Sanjay Gupta, “Performance modeling of asynchronous
data transfer methods of the 802.11 MAC protocol”, Wireless Networks, vol. 3,
August 1997.
[39] Jean Tourrilhes, “WLAN overview”, http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Jean_
Tourrilhes/Linux/Linux.Wireless.Overview.html.

27
A Appendix

A.1 Orthogonality of multiple sinusoidals and their frequency spac-

ing

For two sinusoidals to be orthogonal to each other, the following must be true:

Z T
cos(2π(f1 t + φ) · cos(2πf2 t)dt = 0 (2)
0

where T is the symbol period, f1 and f2 are the frequencies of the two sinusoidals and
φ is the phase difference of the first cosine. Integrating and applying the limits, this
simplifies to

" #
sin(2π(f1 + f2 )T ) sin(2π(f1 − f2 )T )
cos(φ) + +
2π(f1 + f2 ) 2π(f1 − f2 )
" # (3)
cos(2π(f1 + f2 )T ) cos(2π(f1 − f2 )T )
sin(φ) + =0
2π(f1 + f2 ) 2π(f1 − f2 )

Also note that for any integer value of n, sin(nπ) = 0 and cos(2nπ) = 1. Then if we
assume that (f1 + f2 )T is an integer, we see that a few terms in the equation above
disappear because sin(2π(f1 + f2 )T ) = 0 and cos(2π(f1 + f2 )T ) = 1. Substituting
simplifies Equation 3 to
   
sin 2π(f1 − f2 )T cos 2π(f1 − f2 )T − 1
cos(φ) + sin(φ) =0 (4)
2π(f1 − f2 ) 2π(f1 − f2 )

So, for a random phase (φ) between 0 and 2π, the numerators of both fractions need
to be 0 in order for the whole equation to be zero, and thus have orthogonality. So
sin(2π(f1 − f2 )T ) has to be 0 and cos(2π(f1 − f1 )T ) has to be 1, this is the case when
2π(f1 − f2 )T = 2nπ, n being an integer. This condition, 2π(f1 − f2 )T = 2nπ, can be
simplified to f1 − f2 = Tn . The minimum value of n is 1, so the minimum frequency
difference at arbitrary phase difference between f1 and f2 is T1 , and the two sinusoidals
are orthogonal at frequency differences Tn [34].

28