614
3, MARCH 2018
A Novel Adaptive TDMA-Based MAC Protocol for VANETs
Shengbin Cao and Victor C. S. Lee, Member, IEEE
Abstract— The medium access control (MAC) protocol plays an
important role in vehicular ad-hoc networks (VANETs) to provide
efficient broadcast service for safety applications. However, the
highly dynamic nature of VANETs, such as high mobility and fast
topology change, degrades the performance of existing MAC pro-
tocols. In this letter, we propose a novel adaptive Time Division
Multiple Access-based MAC (VAT-MAC) protocol for VANETs.
VAT-MAC accurately and adaptively optimizes each time frame
length by estimating and predicting the number of vehicles
within the coverage of a roadside unit. It has been proven by
mathematical analysis and simulation experiment that VAT-MAC
can significantly improve system scalability and throughput.
Index Terms— MAC protocol, vehicular ad-hoc networks
(VANETs), safety message.
I. I NTRODUCTION
R ECENTLY, Vehicular Ad-Hoc Networks (VANETs) are
drawing dramatic attention for their ability to support
safety applications [1], [2]. There are two major components
in VANETs: on board unit (OBU) and roadside unit (RSU).
The OBU is a communication device mounted on a vehicle,
while the RSU is an infrastructure located on the road and
provides vehicles with Internet access [3].
The most crucial objective of VANETs is to support
safety applications, in which safety messages are broadcasted
periodically by each vehicle. Each safety message contains
vehicle ID, velocity, and position information of the sending
vehicle to create cooperative neighborhood awareness. How-
ever, the special characteristics of VANETs such as fast topol-
ogy change and high node mobility increase the challenges in
the design of MAC protocol for an efficient broadcast service.
In [4], a TDMA-based MAC protocol called VeMAC is
proposed. In VeMAC, the time is partitioned into time frames,
while each time frame is further divided into a fixed number
of time slots. Each vehicle first contends for a time slot in a
frame to transmit messages. If a vehicle successfully accesses
a slot without collision, it will continuously use this slot in
subsequent frames. Since vehicles are required to broadcast
observed slot occupancy information about all its one-hop
neighbors, a vehicle can know which slots are available to
access. However, due to the fixed frame length and highly
dynamic nature of VANETs, existing TDMA-based protocols
suffer from the time slot wastage and shortage problems. The
time slot wastage (resp. shortage) problem happens when the
number of slots in the time frame is larger (resp. less) than
Manuscript received October 20, 2017; revised December 1, 2017; accepted
December 15, 2017. Date of publication December 20, 2017; date of current
version March 8, 2018. The work described in this paper was partially
supported by a grant from City University of Hong Kong (Project No.
7004412). The associate editor coordinating the review of this paper and
approving it for publication was S. Coleri Ergen. (Corresponding author:
Victor C. S. Lee.)
The authors are with the Department of Computer Science, City University
of Hong Kong, Hong Kong (e-mail: sbjcao2-c@my.cityu.edu.hk;
csvlee@cityu.edu.hk).
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/LCOMM.2017.2785378
1558-2558 © 2017 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission.
See http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
IEEE COMMUNICATIONS LETTERS, VOL. 22, NO.
the number of vehicles. Moreover, since each safety message
needs to include additional information about slot occupancy,
the overhead is very large.
In order to improve the flexibility of VeMAC, in [5],
a TDMA-based protocol named ATSA is proposed. In ATSA,
the frame length is dynamically doubled or halved according
to the vehicle density. If the ratio of the number of vehicles to
the time frame length is larger than a predefined upper bound,
the frame length is doubled, while if the ratio is lower than a
predefined lower bound, the frame length is halved. Using this
method, the throughput can be improved compared to VeMAC.
However, ATSA cannot fully utilize the channel bandwidth
due to the fixed upper and lower bounds. Moreover, since
ATSA is based on VeMAC, the overhead is also very large.
In [6], an adaptive RSU-coordinated TDMA MAC protocol,
named ACFM, is proposed. In ACFM, an RSU manages the
time slot allocation for each vehicle in its coverage. The time is
divided into time frames, while each time frame consists of an
adaptive number of fixed-length Subframes. An RSU decreases
the time frame length by one Subframe when there are too
many empty time slots. In contrast, if there are insufficient
time slots for current vehicles, the RSU increases the time
frame length by one Subframe. ACFM is able to improve the
throughput and decrease the amount of overhead due to the
reason that only one management message transmitted by the
RSU is needed to coordinate time slot allocation for each time
frame. However, due to the fixed length of Subframes, the time
slot resource cannot be fully utilized.
In this letter, we propose a novel Adaptive TDMA-
based MAC (VAT-MAC) protocol. Different from other
TDMA-based protocols, in VAT-MAC, the RSU keeps adjust-
ing each time frame length frame by frame to ensure the
maximum time slot utilization. In our proposed protocol, at the
end of each time frame, the RSU estimates the number of
vehicles that will contend for time slots of the subsequent
time frame. Then, using this estimated number, the RSU
determines the optimal length of the subsequent time frame
which maximizes the throughput. Then, this optimized time
frame length is announced by transmitting a management
message at the start of the subsequent frame. Our main
contributions can be summarized as follows:
• Designing a novel TDMA-based MAC protocol, which
provides efficient broadcast service for safety message
transmission. VAT-MAC accurately and adaptively opti-
mizes each time frame length using three procedures:
node estimation (NE), leaving node determination (LND),
newly entering node prediction and time frame optimiza-
tion (NETF) procedures.
• Through mathematical analysis and simulation experi-
ment, we show that VAT-MAC significantly improves
the performance in terms of scalability and throughput
compared to other protocols.
CAO AND LEE: NOVEL ADAPTIVE TDMA-BASED MAC PROTOCOL FOR VANET
Fig. 1. The proposed VAT-MAC.
II. VAT-MAC P ROTOCOL
In VAT-MAC, the time of channel is divided into time
frames, while each time frame consists of Time Frame Man-
agement Period (TMP), Free Transmission Period (FTP), and
Contention Period (CP), as shown in Fig. 1. During the
TMP, a Time Frame Management Frame (TMF) is transmitted
by the RSU, indicating the durations of FTP and CP. The
vehicles receiving the TMF contend for time slots of CP. If a
vehicle successfully accesses a slot without collision, it can
be identified by the RSU and a slot of FTP in subsequent
frame will be allocated to it. Otherwise, the RSU will detect
a collision slot. For example, in Fig. 1, vehicle V 4, which
has successfully accessed a slot of CP in the first frame,
is allocated a slot of FTP in the second frame. However,
vehicles that enter the RSU coverage after the transmission of
TMF will miss the information of FTP and CP. Hence, they
may randomly access any slot of the entire frame, i.e., the
slots of both FTP and CP, so that the slots of FTP may be
interfered by these vehicles. In Fig. 1, the slot allocated to V 3
is interfered by a newly entering vehicle V 7.
The time frame length is adapted using three procedures:
NE, LND, and NETF. In the NE, the number of nodes located
within the RSU coverage is estimated at the end of a frame.
Then, the LND determines the nodes that will leave the
RSU coverage during the subsequent frame. Finally, the
NETF predicts the number of nodes that will newly enter the
RSU coverage during the subsequent frame, and based on this
information, optimizes the subsequent frame length.
A. Node Estimation (NE)
Let C Ncp[i] and L cp[i] denote the number of nodes that
contend for time slots of C Pi and the number of slots of C Pi
(CP in time frame i ), respectively. Then, the ratio RCcp[i] ,
which is the number of collision slots in C Pi to L cp[i] , can
be derived as follows [7]:
 C Ncp[i]   PN (N[i] ) = e−λR ·
1 C Ncp[i]
RCcp[i] = 1 − 1 − 1+ . (1)
L cp[i] L cp[i] − 1
Since the RSU knows the values of RCcp[i] and L cp[i] , C Ncp[i]
can be derived by (1). Note that the contending nodes include
nodes that receive TMF and know C Pi slots, and nodes
that newly enter the RSU coverage and access C Pi slots
aware new
blindly, denoted by C Ncp[i] and C Ncp[i] , respectively. Hence,
C Ncp[i] can be expressed by
aware new
C Ncp[i] = C Ncp[i] + C Ncp[i] . (2)
Using the ratio RC f t p[i] of the number of collision slots in
F T Pi to the number of F T Pi slots, the number of newly
615
entering nodes C N new f t p[i] that blindly access a time slot of
F T Pi can be derived by
 C N new
1 f t p[i]
RC f t p[i] = 1 − 1 − , (3)
L f t p[i]
where L f t p[i] denotes the number of F T Pi slots. Since the
RSU knows the values of RC f t p[i] and L f t p[i] , C N new
f t p[i] can
be derived by (3). Hence, the number of nodes that exist within
the RSU coverage at the end of frame i , i.e., N[i] , can be
calculated as follows,
aware new
N[i] = C Ncp[i] + C Ncp[i] + C N new
f t p[i] + AN f t p[i] , (4)
where AN f t p[i] denotes the number of nodes that have been
allocated time slots of F T Pi in the beginning of frame i . The
nodes that have been allocated a slot of FTP will keep on
using the same slot in the subsequent frames until leaving the
RSU coverage, even if the allocated slot is interfered by newly
entering nodes.
B. Leaving Node Determination (LND)
The procedure includes determination of vehicles that will
leave the RSU coverage during the subsequent frame, updat-
ing of Member List (ML) and frame configuration. The
ML kept by the RSU includes IDs of the identified nodes.
At the end of a frame i , using the position and velocity
information of each vehicle in the ML, the RSU compares
the residual time before a node will cross the boundary of
RSU coverage with the arrival time of the allocated time slot.
If the residual time of a node will end before the arrival of the
allocated time slot, the node is considered as a leaving node.
Meanwhile, its ID is removed from the ML and the length of
the next FTP, i.e., L f t p[i+1] , is updated as follows
L f t p[i+1] = L f t p[i] − L N f t p[i+1] , (5)
where L N f t p[i+1] is the number of nodes that are considered
to be outside the coverage during the subsequent frame.
C. Newly Entering Node Prediction and Time Frame
Optimization (NETF)
NETF first calculates the vehicle density. Then, it predicts
the number of newly entering nodes and optimizes the sub-
sequent frame length. We assume that inter-vehicle spacing is
exponentially distributed with average vehicle density λ veh/m.
Hence, the Probability Mass Function (PMF) of the number
of vehicles during frame i , i.e., PN (N[i] ), can be derived by
(λR) N[i]
, (6)
N[i] !
where λ and R is the vehicle density and RSU coverage range,
respectively. Then by the maximum likelihood estimation,
the average vehicle density λ can be achieved as follows:
N[i]
λ= . (7)
R
Thus, the predicted number of newly entering nodes,
new , can be derived by
i.e., P N[i+1]
new
P N[i+1] = L [i+1] · λ · Vave , (8)
where L [i+1] is the subsequent frame length, which needs to
be optimized. Then, the predicted number of newly entering
616 IEEE COMMUNICATIONS LETTERS, VOL. 22, NO. 3, MARCH 2018

Fig. 2. Markov chain.

new
nodes P Ncp[i+1] and P N new
f t p[i+1] , which will access C Pi+1
and F T Pi+1 , respectively, can be achieved by
⎧
⎪
⎪ new · L cp[i+1]
new
⎨ P Ncp[i+1] = P N[i+1]
L [i+1] Fig. 3. Average number of nodes acquiring a time slot within n frames.
L i+1 − L cp[i+1] (9)
⎪
⎪
f t p[i+1] = P N[i+1] ·
⎩ P N new ,
new
L [i+1]
where L cp[i+1] is the number of slots of C Pi+1 . Since the
probability of successful time slot access and throughput for
the subsequent frame can be maximized when the number of
contending nodes is equal to the number of time slots [7],
the following equation should be satisfied.
L cp[i+1] = C N new
f t p[i] + P Ncp[i+1] + F Ncp[i] ,
new
(10)
where F Ncp[i] denotes the number of nodes that fail to access
a time slot of C Pi . Since the number of nodes that successfully
obtain a slot of C Pi , i.e., S Ncp[i] , is known by the RSU, Fig. 4. Average normalized throughput of frame n.
F Ncp[i] can be derived as follows,
F Ncp[i] = C Ncp[i] − S Ncp[i] . (11)
Finally. we can derive the average normalized throughput for
Then, we can derive L cp[i+1] by time frame n, i.e., θn by
f t p[i] + F Ncp[i]
C N new ηn
L cp[i+1] = . (12) θn = , (16)
1 − λ · Vave f ln
where f ln is the length of frame n.
III. P ERFORMANCE A NALYSIS AND S IMULATION
Fig. 3 shows the average number of nodes acquiring a
First, we show the mathematical analysis, in which there time slot within n frames. In VAT-MAC, all nodes can obtain
are K nodes within the RSU coverage, contending for a time slot in a few frames since VAT-MAC accurately
N slots included in the initial time frame. Let X n be the estimates the number of vehicles within the RSU coverage and
number of successful nodes within frame n. Then, X n forms increases/decreases each frame length to match the number.
a Markov chain shown in Fig. 2, with the following transition However, VeMAC is unable to allocate time slots to all nodes
probabilities: when K is larger than N due to its inadaptability. Due to
⎧
⎪
⎪ W ( j, K , N) the same reason, VAT-MAC outperforms VeMAC in terms of
⎪
⎪ i = 0, 0 ≤ j ≤ K , normalized throughput, as shown in Fig. 4.
⎨ (N) K
Pi, j = W ( j − i, K − i, K − i ) 0 ≤ i ≤ K − 1, i ≤ j ≤ K , Next, we show the performance comparison with other
⎪
⎪ (K − i ) K −i adaptive protocols in a more realistic scenario by building
⎪
⎪
⎩1 i = j = K. a simulation platform using ns-2 (Release 2.35) [9] and
SUMO [10]. We employ Krauss-car-following model, which
(13)
is the default vehicle mobility model provided in SUMO, with
where W (l, u, v) is the number of ways by which l nodes can a speed limit of 30 m/s. Also, the TDMA module provided in
acquire a time slot given that there are u contending nodes that ns-2 is employed to implement the MAC protocols.
contend for v available time slots. W (l, u, v) can be calculated The simulated scenario is a segment of a 5-lane, one-direction
as follows [8], highway, with an RSU located at the middle point. The
W (l, u, v) = Clu · Clv · l! · ((v − l)u−l communication range of the radios is set to be 300 m. The
Nakagami RF model provided in ns-2 is used, since it well

u−l
models a fading channel on a highway.
− W (i, u − l, v − l)). (14)
The maximum length of a time frame is limited to 100 ms to
i=1
ensure the QoS requirement of safety messages. Since a non-
Then, the average number of nodes that successfully access a RSU-coordinated MAC protocol coordinates time slot alloca-
time slot within frame n, i.e., ηn , can be derived by tion in a distributed way, each safety message has to include an

K additional 100-byte time slot occupancy information field [4].
n
ηn = i · M1,i+1 . (15) The simulation time is set to 1000 s in each simulation.
i=0 In order to achieve a confidence interval of 0.95 with
CAO AND LEE: NOVEL ADAPTIVE TDMA-BASED MAC PROTOCOL FOR VANET
TABLE I
S IMULATION PARAMETERS
Fig. 5. Average normalized throughput versus vehicle density.
Fig. 6. Success ratio versus vehicle density.
half-widths of less than 5% about the mean, we ran
100 simulations with different random seeds and averaged the
results. Table I shows the parameters used in the simulation.
Fig. 5 shows the throughput of VAT-MAC, VeMAC, ATSA,
ACFM for varying vehicle densities. VAT-MAC outperforms
the others due to the frame optimization, whereas in the
other protocols, either fixed frame length or fixed upper and
lower bounds results in time slot wastage problem. After the
vehicle density exceeds 0.20 veh/m and 0.25 veh/m, the other
protocols have similar performance with VAT-MAC due to
the reason that when vehicle density is high, the number of
vehicles is similar to or larger than the time frame length.
Thus, most of the time slots in a time frame are allocated to
vehicles.
617
Fig. 7. Coordination overhead versus vehicle density.
Fig. 6 shows the success ratio performance for varying
vehicle densities. Here, the success ratio means the ratio of
the number of vehicles that are allocated time slots to the total
number of vehicles. After the density exceeds 0.20 veh/m,
the success ratios of VeMAC and ATSA decrease since the
average number of surrounding vehicles is larger than the time
frame length, i.e., time slot shortage problem.
Fig. 7 shows the coordination overhead. The coordination
overhead is defined as the throughput wasted by coordination-
related messages. The overheads of VAT-MAC and ACFM
are much less than the others, since in an RSU-coordinated
protocol, the only coordination-related message is the man-
agement message transmitted only once at the beginning of
each time frame, whereas in a non-RSU-coordinated protocol,
each transmitted safety message has to include an additional
100-byte field for coordination purpose [4].
IV. C ONCLUSION
In this letter, we propose a novel Adaptive TDMA-based
MAC (VAT-MAC) protocol for VANETs. It provides efficient
broadcast service for safety message transmission. VAT-MAC
accurately and adaptively optimizes each time frame length.
It is shown from mathematical analysis and simulation experi-
ment that VAT-MAC significantly improves system scalability
and throughput.
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