Connectivity requirements for a self-organizing vehicular network

Abstract

In order to facilitate the traffic information dissemination in a self-organizing vehicular network, the network connectivity is required. In other words, a message from a source vehicle should be able to propagate and reach all of the vehicles on the road segment. Clearly, this requires the road segment to have a certain number of vehicles equipped with communication devices. It is a task of a system designer to determine the minimum number of vehicles (i.e., the minimum penetration) necessary to form a connected network as well as the critical transmission range required to provide such connectivity. In this paper, we present an analytical framework for determining the connectivity requirements in distributing traffic information in a self-organizing vehicular network. Both one-way and two-way street scenarios are considered.