Improving EDCA for Efficient Channel Access in Vehicular Communications

With the development of artificial intelligence, IoT, and high-performance computing, modern vehicles are becoming more and more connected and autonomous, which is deeply dependent on wireless communications for information exchange and sharing between the vehicle and the surrounding environment. IEEE 802.11p is a standard protocol designed for low latency and high mobility of vehicular communications. However, the Enhanced Distributed Channel Access (EDCA) of 802.11p with static access category queue allocation and fixed backoff parameter setting cannot meet the requirement of efficient vehicular channel access. In light of this, we improve EDCA by prioritizing messages and adjusting backoff window values dynamically to guarantee the timely delivery of real-time messages. Simulation results show that the proposed mechanism has higher throughput and lower transmission delay for efficient vehicular communications.