An Extensive Survey and Taxonomy of MAC Protocols for Vehicular Wireless Networks

Vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) represent a rapidly emerging, particularly challenging class of mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs). VANETs are distributed, selforganizing communication networks built up from traveling vehicles, and are thus characterized by very high speed and limited degrees of freedom in nodes’ movement patterns. In contrast to classical nodes, in a vehicle there is no problem of storage and

6.1 Introduction .......................................................... 183 6.2 Issues in Designing MAC Protocols .................. 185

6.5 Qualitative Comparison of VANET MAC Protocols .................................................................207