An Investigation of the Bits Corruption in the IEEE 802.11p

Data rate management algorithms aim to perform a proper selection of the signal modulation and the coding rate to avoid the corruption of data bits. This paper describes a preliminary investigation on the bit corruption pattern related to the IEEE 802.11p standard. Measurements have been acquired with an experimental test-bed made up with a couple of software radios to perform white-box tests. Software radios are stationary and operate on the same channel without disturbances coming from concurrent communication. The aim of this experimental test-bed is to represent a static scenario where vehicles are stationary such as a crossroad situation. The data analysis shows that a data length reduction as an impact as much as a decrease of the data rate. A deeper analysis of the data bit corruption distribution highlights that some bits are more corrupted than others, rejecting the independent and identically distributed assumption for some situations. This opens a perspective to design algorithms dealing with multiple constraints, even if they are NP-complete.