Cars as roadside units: a selforganizing network solution

Abstract Deploying Roadside Units (RSUs) for increasing the connectivity of vehicular ad hoc networks is deemed necessary for coping with the partial penetration of Dedicated Short Range Communications (DSRC) radios into the market at the initial stages of DSRC deployment. Several factors including cost, complexity, existing systems, and lack of cooperation between government and private sectors have impeded the deployment of RSUs. In this paper, we propose to solve this formidable problem by using a biologically inspired self-organizing network approach whereby certain vehicles serve as RSUs. The proposed solution is based on designing local rules and the corresponding algorithms that implement such local rules. Results show that the proposed approach can increase the message reachability and connectivity substantially