RECEIVE POWER AND C/I CHARACTERISTICS OF DSRC SYSTEMS UNDER HEAVY SNOWY CONDITIONS

This paper describes how snow on highways has series impacts on safety, e.g., traffic accidents and traffic jams, in cold and snowy regions like Hokkaido. It is expected that a cruise assist system realized by ITS (Intelligent Transport Systems) could reduce these traffic accidents and traffic jams. In order to convey traffic and vehicle information between fixed roadside base stations and moving vehicles, DSRC (Dedicated Short Range Communication) systems play an important role in this cruise assist system. In the DSRC system, the signal power received is extremely attenuated at some points between a base station and a vehicle and this is because a direct wave is interfered with waves reflected by road surfaces and roadside walls. Also, the received signal is interfered with co-channel interference signals transmitted by other base stations. Furthermore, heavy snow affect radio propagation environments of the DSRC systems, which should be taken into account in evaluating the receive power characteristics of the DSRC systems so that the threshold performance of the DSRC systems are achieved. In this paper, the influence of snow on the receive power characteristics and carrier-to-interference (C/I) power stations of the DSRC systems are investigated by comparing the results with and without snow on the road.