Robustness Evaluation of Decentralized Self-Information Dissemination Control Algorithms for VANET Tracking Applications

The success of VANET safety mechanisms, e.g. pre-crash warning and collaborative collision avoidance, relies on good proximity-awareness of each subject vehicle. Prior analysis shows that a self-information dissemination control on each car, which adapts communication rate based on estimation error and channel congestion, can achieve higher tracking accuracy than others in a multi-access channel. In this paper, we extensively evaluate the robustness of three communication policies under different highway traffics. The worst case scenario, in terms of tracking accuracy, is identified to be a bidirectional highway with one direction congested and another direction being free flowing. Our proposed algorithms are shown to be robust and achieve much better tracking performance than 100-ms beaconing suggested by.