February 2019
Delay-Aware V2X Safe Communications
Prototyped low-latency, deterministic V2X messaging on a Linux real-time kernel and benchmarked latency for safety-critical vehicle communication.
- Real-Time Systems
- C
- Networking
- V2X
Overview
In V2X (vehicle-to-everything) safety communication, a late message is as dangerous as a lost one — determinism matters as much as throughput. This project prototypes delay-aware messaging and rigorously benchmarks end-to-end latency under different operating-system scheduling configurations.
What I built
- Implemented a client/server messaging prototype in C over raw Ethernet frames (MAC-level), timestamping each message to cleanly separate network latency from processing time.
- Benchmarked latency across a Linux real-time (PREEMPT_RT) kernel vs a voluntary-preemption kernel, sweeping packet sizes, scheduling priorities, and CPU contention (Hackbench).
Findings
- The real-time kernel delivered roughly 5–10× lower and far more deterministic latency than the voluntary kernel.
- Determinism held even at greater distance and through obstacles — the latency spikes stayed bounded, confirming suitability for safety-critical V2X.
Stack
C · Linux real-time kernel · raw sockets · Makefile · Python/HTML for analysis.