Design of the channel allocation procedure of the IEEE 802.11 ad-hoc networks for traffic control systems

Abstract

The multi-agent traffic control system is a popular topic in intelligent transportation systems (ITS). Considering the cost of deploying wired networks in real world, the wireless network is more convenient in implementation and it is also more appropriate to serve as the communication interface in the multi-agent traffic control system. In this paper, we propose a new method called the channel allocation procedure (CAP) and its physical protocol of IEEE 802.11 ad-hoc network is further modified to suit the hopping procedure for each single channel sequentially. By combining both the proposed CAP method and the ad-hoc on-demand distance vector routing (AODV), an effective communication interface for the multi-agent traffic control system can be thus directly established. The CAP method solves the hidden terminal problem which is the main cause of the degradation of network throughput. By evaluating the CAP method using the NCTUns network simulator, results indicate that the throughput of proposed CAP method increases by 75% to 2300% compared with that of the original 802.11 ad-hoc networks.