  Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) communication using Dedicated Short Range
Communications (DSRC) technology provides promising benefits for drastically
reducing vehicle collisions. A decentralized approach combined with DSRC allow
vehicles in a highly mobile and complex network to send and receive safety
messages with high reliability and low latency. Notably, there are many factors
that may cause the system to become unreliable due to communication failures.
While the reliability of V2V communication has been a subject of study by
researchers, there is still open questions regarding how the placement of DSRC
devices (inside or outside the host vehicle), the vehicle's interior elements
or the differences in altitude can affect the V2V communications. This paper
aims to provide experimental testing data and analysis to quantify the impact
of relative vehicle speeds, differences in altitudes between two vehicles, and
vehicle's interior obstacles (which can vary depending on the placement of DSRC
device and when communicating with front vs. rear vehicles) on the reliability
of V2V communications.
