Requirements Analysis of IP and MAC Protocols for Dedicated Short Range Communications (DSRC)

This paper presents an analysis of the technical requirements for Internet Protocol (IP) and Medium Access Control (MAC) protocol to support Dedicated Short Range Communications (DSRC) which is a critical element of the Intelligent Transportation System (ITS). This study classifies the DSRC applications into four categories: unicast vehicle-to-vehicle, unicast roadside-to-vehicle, broadcast vehicle-to-vehicle, and broadcast roadside-to-vehicle. A detailed message flow diagram is developed for each category. This paper also analyzes various optional procedures in the 802.11 standard where these procedures should be considered requirements in DSRC. A major contribution of this study is to introduce a new feature, bridging with layer-3 forwarding, to support multi-hop DSRC communications..