Patent ID: 8599038

Claim:
A vehicular wireless communication apparatus, disposed in a subject vehicle, communicating with an object vehicle side wireless communication apparatus disposed in an object vehicle, the vehicular wireless communication apparatus comprising: an information acquisition unit successively acquiring an information at least including a current position information of the subject vehicle, the information acquired being transmitted through wireless communication; a reception unit receiving, from the object vehicle side wireless communication apparatus, (i) current position information indicating a position of the object vehicle and (ii) an independent sensor information indicating at least one of (a) whether the object vehicle is equipped with a range sensor that independently detects a distance to an obstacle in front of the object vehicle and (b) whether the range sensor has succeeded or failed to detect the obstacle; a following vehicle information reception determination unit determining whether the object vehicle is an immediate following vehicle immediately following the subject vehicle, based on a current position of the subject vehicle acquired by the information acquisition unit and the current position information of the object vehicle received by the reception unit; and a transmission cycle control unit changing a transmission cycle for transmitting the current position information of the subject vehicle, wherein when the following vehicle information reception determination unit determines that the object vehicle is the immediate following vehicle of the subject vehicle, the transmission cycle control unit changes the transmission cycle based on the independent sensor information of the immediate following vehicle.