Enhanced Functions of 802.11 Protocol for Adaptation to Communications between High Speed Vehicles and Infrastructures

Abstract

There are many researches on the mobile network based on IEEE 802.11 wireless devices. While wireless LAN devices are commonly used, they have been originally designed for office use and have no support for high mobility. Hence, the association establishment (the channel scanning of mobile nodes and the auth/association frame exchange between mobile nodes and access points) and the handoff often fails when we try to utilize the device for the communication between high speed vehicles and infrastructures. We proposed the method that realizes rapid association establishment and optimized handoffs to solve the problems in a compatible form with 802.11 protocol. We realized the proposed method by modifying the standard 802.11 specification of client side. On the evaluation in the actual environment, we showed better thoroughput with the proposed method than the one with the standard 802.11 specification.