Throughput comparison of CSMA and CDMA slotted ALOHA in inter-vehicle communication

This paper compare the throughput performance of a carrier-sense multiple access (CSMA) scheme that uses an orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDM) physical layer and a CDMA slotted ALOHA scheme based on multicarrier CDMA (MC-CDMA) in inter-vehicle communication (IVC). In particular, we compare the throughputs in a situation where a hidden terminal is no longer negligible. We encounter such a situation in an intersection where two or more cars are crossing by. In a hidden terminal situation, the CSMA scheme may degrade throughput. On the other hand, CDMA slotted ALOHA has a resistance to the hidden terminal situation as it can support simultaneous packets. However, the transmission data rate is much slow because of the spreading. Thus the total throughput may not be as high as the CSMA based OFDM even in a hidden terminal situation. As a result, we show that the CSMA based OFDM system shows better total throughput than CDMA slotted ALOHA in all region. But, only the signal from the nearest car can be received. On the contrary, CDMA slotted ALOHA can be received many packets simultaneously. This is much preferable feature for safety driving.