A Geometric Analysis Method for Evaluation of Coexistence between DSRC and Wi-Fi at 5.9 GHz

Co-channel coexistence between Dedicated ShortRange Communications (DSRC) and Wi-Fi needs thorough study. The reason is that although the 5.850-5.925 GHz (5.9 GHz) band has been reserved for DSRC so far, the U.S. government is moving swiftly on opening the band to be shared with WiFi. However, most prior work lacks sufficient scientific rigor by relying on performance metrics such as packet delivery rate (PDR) and packet delay that cannot accurately measure performance of a vehicular network that primarily uses broadcast in dissemination of packets. Precise analysis of such broadcast operation is essential for rigorous investigation of DSRC-Wi-Fi coexistence because most safety-critical applications of DSRC operate based on broadcast. This paper proposes a new metric that can more accurately characterize the performance of a broadcast-based DSRC network. The new metric is used to (i) characterize coexistence of DSRC with IEEE 802.11ac-based Wi-Fi and (ii) suggest selection of key medium access control (MAC) parameters for DSRC: inter-broadcast interval (IBI) and contention window (CW).