Research on the Enhancement of VANET Coverage Based on UAV

Abstract

In the process of Vehicular ad hoc network (VANET) infrastructure, Roadside Unit (RSU) can facilitate vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communications and enable communications between vehicles and the Internet. However, RSUs are expensive and immovable. Once installed on the side of the road, they cannot be moved. Therefore, as traffic flow changes, there always exists a certain amount of RSUs that will either be waste or shortage. Compared with the immovable RSUs, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) possess the advantage of convenient deployment and movement, which can move flexibly based on the changes of traffic flow. In this paper, we study the network coverage enhancement issue for VANETs by using UAVs, which serve as air base stations (BSs) for improving coverage and boosting connectivity. Specifically, the deployment problem is modeled as minimizing the amount of required RSUs and UAVs with the constraint of an enough coverage. A novel joint deployment scheme is proposed for RSUs and UAVs. The simulation results show that our deployment scheme can dynamically adapt to the changing traffic flow, and meanwhile guaranteeing coverage and cutting costs.