Analysis of Car-to-Car Beaconing with Network Coding

Abstract

Lack of updated information due to a high beacon loss rate is a key challenge
in car-to-car beaconing strategies. One potential solution for this issue is to
re-broadcast lost beacons. However, the repeated dissemination of each lost beacon
is infeasible due to the limited bandwidth of wireless channels. To overcome this
limitation, network coding is a promising technique, through which a node combines
(i.e. codes) multiple packets from different sources and re-broadcasts them
through one transmission for the efficient bandwidth usage. In the past, network
coding has been employed only for data packets. In this paper, this idea is used for
periodic beacons in car-to-car communication to analyze, how much it is effective
for the recovery of lost beacons. To this end, we propose two approaches: random
selection and radius-based, and compare them to determine, which scheme recovers
more beacons. We evaluate these approaches in both sparse and dense highway
traffic scenarios with probabilistic radio propagation characteristics.