Performance of DSRC systems using conventional channel estimation at high velocities

In this paper, we present a study of the dedicated short range communications (DSRC) receiver performance under varying signal to noise ratio, velocity, symbol durations and packet lengths. Conventional channel estimation, which is used in IEEE 802.11a, assumes static channel characteristics for the entire packet duration. That is found to be infeasible for high velocity DSRC applications. Simulation results show that the packet-error-rate increases with the increase in relative velocity. Viterbi decoding substantially improves the performance, but the sensitivity to Doppler shift still exists. Analysis and simulation results show that extending the symbol duration or increasing packet length results in an increase of the packet-error-rate. These results may serve as benchmarks for future DSRC channel estimation methods.