Wi-Fi devices can share the 5.9 gigahertz band without impacting the safety of dedicated short-range communications (DSRC) operations, according to a paper. “We observe that DSRC SAFR (safety alert failure rate) is not impacted by the presence of Wi-Fi traffic in the adjacent channel,” said the paper, which examined the results of an open-source vehicular traffic simulator to study 20,000 vehicles during rush hour in Bologna, Italy. “We also observe that the SAFR is above the levels deemed by DSRC architects to be harmful to system performance in the majority of locations simulated; however, since this result is not due to Wi-Fi interference, we conclude that it is most likely attributed to DSRC system instability in high vehicular traffic scenarios. We perform a number of checks to demonstrate the robustness of these conclusions. Our results therefore suggest that regulators can successfully enable Wi-Fi use of the 5.9 GHz band without impacting DSRC safety efficacy. This finding provides the necessary technical foundation for policy in an important frequency band, and provides a valuable case study for rigorous analysis in spectrum sharing scenarios more generally.”