Effects of Location Uncertainty on Position-Based Broadcast Protocols in Inter-Vehicle Communication Systems

Inter-Vehicle Communication (IVC) systems are envisioned as the primary means to enable intelligent transportation systems and to increase vehicle traffic safety. Majority of applications envisioned for IVC systems rely on broadcast dissemination of information in the application area. Several broadcast protocols proposed for IVC systems utilize position information to optimize the system performance. However, errors in positioning systems may adversely affect the performance of such protocols. In this paper, we study the effects of position uncertainty on different IVC broadcast protocols. Our position uncertainty model accounts for correlated as well as uncorrelated errors of GPS receivers in urban settings. Our simulation results show that negative effects of position errors are minimized when they are used to calculate relative distances for nodes.