Variable Cyclic Prefix for Contention-Based Wireless Access in OFDM-Based Vehicular Communication Systems

In vehicular environment, signal transmissions face more challenges than in indoor wireless local area systems. In such an unpredictable communication environment, multipath fading causes high bit error rate, which leads to higher dropping probability of packets. In order to reduce the dropping probability of handshaking packets without increasing the infrastructure capability, we propose to modify the traditional cyclic prefix into a variable cyclic prefix (VCP) of request-to-send and clear-to-send frames. By reducing the handshaking packet error rates, we improve the contention ability in carrier sense multiple access with collision avoidance scheme in vehicle-to-infrastructure transmission. Suitable VCP time slots and dynamically adjustable VCPs are predicted based on the analysis of appropriate environmental parameters.