The Dynamics of Vehicular Networks in Urban Environments

Vehicular Ad hoc NETworks (VANETs) have emerged as a platform to support intelligent inter-vehicle communication and improve traffic safety and performance. The road-constrained and high mobility of vehicles, their unbounded power source, and the emergence of roadside wireless infrastructures make VANETs a challenging research topic. A key to the development of protocols for intervehicle communication and services lies in the knowledge of the topological characteristics of the VANET communication graph. This paper explores the dynamics of VANETs in urban environments. Using both real and realistic mobility traces, we study the networking shape of VANETs in urban environments under different transmission and market penetration ranges. Given that a number of RSUs have to be deployed for disseminating information to vehicles in an urban area, we also study their impact on vehicular connectivity. Several latent facts about the VANET graph are revealed and implications for their exploitati...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2010
• Where: CORR
• Authors: Nicholas Loulloudes, George Pallis, Marios D. Dikaiakos
• Keywords: CORR 2010, Education, Intelligent Inter-vehicle Communication, Urban Environments, Vehicular Ad Hoc