Development of potential methods for testing congestion control algorithm implemented in vehicle-to-vehicle...

A channel congestion problem might occur when the traffic density increases because the number of basic safety messages carried on the communication channel also increases in vehicle-to-vehicle communications. A remedy algorithm proposed in SAE J2945/1 is designed to address the channel congestion issue by decreasing transmission frequency and radiated power. This study is to develop potential test procedures for evaluating or validating the congestion control algorithm.

Simulations of a reference unit transmitting at a higher frequency are implemented to emulate a number of onboard equipment (OBE) transmitting at the normal interval of 100 ms (10 Hz). When the transmitting interval is reduced to 1.25 ms (800 Hz), the reference unit emulates 80 vehicles transmitting at 10 Hz. By increasing the number of reference units transmitting at 800 Hz in the simulations, the corresponding channel busy percentages are obtained. An algorithm for Global Positioning System (GPS) data generation of virtual vehicles is developed for facilitating the validation of transmission intervals in the congestion control algorithm.

Channel busy percentage is the channel busy time over a specified period of time. Three or 4 reference units are needed to generate channel busy percentages between 50 and 80%, and 5 reference units can generate channel busy percentages above 80%. The proposed test procedures can verify the operation of congestion control algorithm when channel busy percentages are between 50 and 80% and above 80%. By using a GPS data generation algorithm, the test procedures can also verify the transmission intervals when traffic densities are 80 and 200 vehicles in a radius of 100 m. A suite of test tools with functional requirements is also proposed for facilitating the implementation of test procedures.

The potential test procedures for a congestion control algorithm are developed based on the simulation results of channel busy percentage and the GPS data generation algorithm. The test tools can examine the requirement compliance automatically and objectively. The required number of reference units should be further validated using real OBEs before implementing these potential test procedures.