Connectivity analysis for dynamic movement of vehicular ad hoc networks

Abstract

Speed variation is one of the main challenges in deriving the connectivity related predictions in mobile ad-hoc networks, especially in vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs). In such a dynamic network, a piece of information can be rapidly propagated through dedicated short-range communication, or can be carried by vehicles when multihop connectivity is unavailable. This paper proposes a novel analytical model that carefully computes the connectivity distance for a single direction of a free-flow highway. The proposed model adopts a time-varying vehicular speed assumption and mathematically models the mobility of vehicles inside connectivity. According to the dynamic movability scenario, a novel and accurate closed form formula is proposed for probability density function of connectivity. Moreover, using vehicular spatial distribution, joint Poisson distribution of vehicles in a multilane highway and tail probability of the expected number of vehicles inside single lane in a multilane highway are mathematically investigated. The accuracy of analytical results is verified by simulation. The concluded results provide helpful insights towards designing new applications and improving performance of existing applications on VANETs.