Wireless Vehicular Networks in Emergencies: A Single Frequency Network Approach

TL;DR

This paper proposes a Single Frequency Network approach for vehicular emergency communications, deriving outage bounds and a power allocation algorithm to enhance reliability and reduce power consumption in existing cellular environments.

Contribution

It introduces a novel SFN-based framework for emergency vehicular networks, including outage probability bounds and an efficient power allocation method.

Findings

Power allocation reduces transmission power up to 20 times.

The SFN approach improves reliability in vehicular emergencies.

The method is effective over existing cellular networks.

Abstract

Obtaining high quality sensor information is critical in vehicular emergencies. However, existing standards such as IEEE 802.11p/DSRC and LTE-A cannot support either the required data rates or the latency requirements. One solution to this problem is for municipalities to invest in dedicated base stations to ensure that drivers have the information they need to make safe decisions in or near accidents. In this paper we further propose that these municipality-owned base stations form a Single Frequency Network (SFN). In order to ensure that transmissions are reliable, we derive tight bounds on the outage probability when the SFN is overlaid on an existing cellular network. Using our bounds, we propose a transmission power allocation algorithm. We show that our power allocation model can reduce the total instantaneous SFN transmission power up to $20$ times compared to a static uniform power allocation solution, for the considered scenarios. The result is particularly important when base stations rely on an off-grid power source (i.e., batteries).