Coordination Game Theory-Based Adaptive Topology Control for Hybrid VLC/RF VANET

Abstract

In intelligent transportation systems, vehicular ad-hoc network (VANET) is an important technique for data exchange among vehicles and other mobile terminals (MTs) on the roads. In VANET, radio frequency (RF) and visible light communication (VLC) links could cooperate to improve the communication quality of MTs. However, in order to fully exploit the benefits of these two kinds of communication links and improve the VANET performance, a topology control (TC) scheme should be developed to help MTs establish VLC and RF links with their neighbors properly based on the distribution of MTs in the VANET. Since there is usually not a central controller in the VANET, the TC scheme should be conducted locally at each MT. As the size of VANET increases, distributed TC becomes more challenging since MTs usually need to make decisions with only local knowledge about the VANET. In addition, the frequent changes of VANET structure due to MT movements require that the TC scheme can adapt to the dynamic changes quickly. In consideration of those challenges, an adaptive TC scheme is proposed in this paper, aiming to achieve a balance between connectivity and power consumption for MTs in the hybrid VLC/RF VANET. In the proposed TC scheme, MTs can adjust their related links locally and iteratively based on merely its knowledge about the local VANET topology. Moreover, the TC problem is modelled by the coordination game, which guarantees that the proposed TC scheme can converge to a Nash Equilibrium state and can also adapt to the changes in VANET structure dynamically.