Adaptive repetition strategies in IEEE 802.11bd V2X networks

Vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communications have very strict throughput and latency requirements, even in scenarios with high mobility. IEEE 802.11bd is being developed as a WiFi amendment to improve V2X performance, allowing up to three repetitions per packet, along with other features. Message repetitions increase time diversity and enable maximum ratio combining at the receiver, thus improving the probability of correct decoding. This paper investigates the IEEE 802.11bd packet repetition feature. First, we analyze how the increased channel load due to repetitions may in some cases result in a higher collision rate leading to lower network performance. Then, we propose two strategies for exploiting the IEEE 802.11bd repetition feature. The proposed strategies use the channel busy ratio to adapt the number of transmissions to the channel load and are validated through network-level simulations, which account for both the acquisition and decoding processes. Results show that the proposed strategies improve network performance under variable traffic conditions and enable fair access to the channel.