Strategic Sensing in Vehicular Networks Using Known Mobility Information

Abstract

In this paper, we study the problem of sensing targets in the context of vehicular networks. First, we define targets to be the vehicles moving on the road and sensors to be the roadside cameras. Then, we study the effect of predicted mobility on reducing the number of times each camera is activated in order to guarantee the coverage of targets. We formulate the sensing problem as an integer linear program using an opportunistic scheduler. Afterward, we extend the formulation and propose a novel strategic scheduler for coverage, which utilizes the predicted mobility information. We then extend this method to a fully distributed version and propose an approximation algorithm by exchanging messages among the sensors. Using a Markovian and a car-following availability models, we show by simulations that the number of activated sensors is significantly reduced by utilizing predicted mobility information. After that, we analyze both schedulers to quantify the gain of utilizing mobility information in sensing. We adopt an independent node mobility model due to its tractability. The analysis is composed of two main components; calculation of mobility gain in terms of sensing cost and probability of feasibility. Our analysis and simulations demonstrate the gain of mobility in sensing targets in terms of higher probability of feasibility and lower sensing cost.