Performance Evaluation of Data Dissemination Protocols for an Infrastructure-to-Vehicle Cooperative Traffic Light Application

Cooperative systems based on Infrastructure-to-Vehicle (I2V) wireless communication offer promising opportunities for automotive safety and traffic efficiency improvements. This research proposes a cooperative traffic-light system based on wireless I2V communication between vehicles and fixed Road Side Units (RSUs) deployed at intersections. This application, called the Cooperative Traffic Light Assistant (CTLA), is directly connected to a Traffic Light Controller (TLC) and therefore able to disseminate TLC related data. Approaching vehicles receiving this data can react in different ways, e.g. by adjusting their speed or by choosing an alternative route. The objectives of using such kind of traffic efficiency applications ranges from minimizing the average travel delay of approaching vehicles to reducing overall fuel consumption and pollutant emission. This research includes the design of three dissemination protocols for the CTLA application. These dissemination protocols can be differentiated by their application trigger condition, the reception pattern, and the routing technology. In addition, multi-hop Vehicle-2-Vehicle (V2V) communication was added to increase the coverage area. All three dissemination protocols have been implemented in the VANET simulator iTETRIS to perform several large scale experiments. The results of the experiments showed that all three dissemination protocols where able to handle the addition of vehicles in large scale scenarios without suffering noticeable loss in performance.