EVALUATION OF MOBILE WIMAX PERFORMANCE IN A METROPOLITAN VEHICULAR APPLICATION

Intelligent transportation systems (ITS) will enhance on-road safety, improve road utilization, fuel efficiency and, last but not the least, allow occupants an entertainment filled ride. They will include a plethora of applications requiring information dissemination that will use vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communication, which has vehicles form an ad hoc network to communicate with each other, and also vehicle-to-roadside (V2R) communication, which amongst other things will provide connectivity to the internet. The offered load in a vehicular network can be significant because of the possibility of large vehicle densities and a variety of supported applications. Also, the wireless propagation environment can be harsh, especially in a metropolitan area like New York City and Los Angeles, and can significantly impact network performance. The load requirements together with the high mobility in a vehicular network make mobile WiMAX a suitable technology for vehicular networks. However, before WiMAX deployments are used by vehicular networks, the performance of typical vehicular applications over WiMAX needs to be evaluated. Also, propagation characteristics of WiMAX, especially in relation to application performance, for example, the impact of intermittent connectivity o