A Wireless Multicast Protocol for Real-Time Communication Between On-Road Vehicles

A wireless multicast protocol for on-road vehicles must cope with two problems caused by the dynamic nature of mobile networks: the unreliable data transmission and network partitioning due to electromagnetic noise and dynamic distances between peer entities, and the interference between different groups whenever several groups of vehicles come close together. In this paper the specific problems of group communication in mobile networks are stated, and some approaches to achieve reliable group communication are surveyed. The paper also presents a group communication approach called ‘floating TDMA’ to achieve reliable multicast delivery, and to cope with interference between different groups.