On the potential of network coding for cooperative awareness in vehicular networks

Vehicular active safety applications require the continuous exchange of positioning and basic status information between neighboring vehicles. This exchange is based on the periodic transmission/reception of 1-hop broadcast messages on the control channel. The critical nature of this channel requires mechanisms to control the channel load while guaranteeing each vehicle's capacity to communicate with its relevant neighboring nodes (awareness). Different studies have analyzed the capacity of network coding to improve the bandwidth efficiency in many different types of networks, but few studies have investigated its implementation in vehicular networks. This paper explores the potential of the combined use of network coding and multi-hop beaconing in vehicular networks in order to improve the vehicles' communications reliability and awareness.