Coexistence of decentralized congestion control algorithms for V2V communication

Channel congestion is one of the most critical issues in IEEE 802.11p-based vehicular communications as it leads to the unreliability of safety applications. As a countermeasure, many Decentralized Congestion Control (DCC) algorithms have been proposed. One of the most prominent DCC algorithms is the message-rate based LIMERIC. Recently, algorithms have also been proposed to support higher vehicle density (better scalability). One of such algorithms is the combined message-rate and data-rate based congestion control algorithm (MD-DCC). MD-DCC can support around 2.7 times higher vehicular density than LIMERIC. However, if LIMERIC has been deployed, can MD-DCC be introduced and coexist well with LIMERIC. The objective of this paper is to investigate how MD-DCC coexists with LIMERIC. Given a scenario where vehicles may use either LIMERIC or MD-DCC, we study the impact of coexistence on channel load, fairness and reliability of vehicles at different densities. Simulation studies show that there is no significant degradation of reliability both for LIMERIC and MD-DCC at different densities. On the contrary, coexistence can improve the reliability of LIMERIC vehicles. Furthermore, MD-DCC can support vehicles at large densities even when it coexists with LIMERIC retaining its scalability. However, fair allocation of resources is not guaranteed when LIMERIC and MD-DCC coexist.