Coalition Formation Games for Distributed Cooperation Among Roadside Units in Vehicular Networks

Vehicle-to-roadside (V2R) communications enable vehicular networks to support a wide range of applications for enhancing the efficiency of road transportation. While existing work focused on non-cooperative techniques for V2R communications between vehicles and roadside units (RSUs), this paper investigates novel cooperative strategies among the RSUs in a vehicular network. We propose a scheme whereby, through cooperation, the RSUs in a vehicular network can coordinate the classes of data being transmitted through V2R communications links to the vehicles. This scheme improves the diversity of the information circulating in the network while exploiting the underlying content-sharing vehicle-to-vehicle communication network. We model the problem as a coalition formation game with transferable utility and we propose an algorithm for forming coalitions among the RSUs. For coalition formation, each RSU can take an individual decision to join or leave a coalition, depending on its utility which accounts for the generated revenues and the costs for coalition coordination. We show that the RSUs can self-organize into a Nash-stable partition and adapt this partition to environmental changes. Simulation results show that, depending on different scenarios, coalition formation presents a performance improvement, in terms of the average payoff per RSU, ranging between 20.5% and 33.2%, relative to the non-cooperative case.Comment: accepted and to appear in IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications (JSAC), Special issue on Vehicular Communications and Network

The Dynamics of Vehicular Networks in Urban Environments

Vehicular Ad hoc NETworks (VANETs) have emerged as a platform to support intelligent inter-vehicle communication and improve traffic safety and performance. The road-constrained, high mobility of vehicles, their unbounded power source, and the emergence of roadside wireless infrastructures make VANETs a challenging research topic. A key to the development of protocols for inter-vehicle communication and services lies in the knowledge of the topological characteristics of the VANET communication graph. This paper explores the dynamics of VANETs in urban environments and investigates the impact of these findings in the design of VANET routing protocols. Using both real and realistic mobility traces, we study the networking shape of VANETs under different transmission and market penetration ranges. Given that a number of RSUs have to be deployed for disseminating information to vehicles in an urban area, we also study their impact on vehicular connectivity. Through extensive simulations we investigate the performance of VANET routing protocols by exploiting the knowledge of VANET graphs analysis.Comment: Revised our testbed with even more realistic mobility traces. Used the location of real Wi-Fi hotspots to simulate RSUs in our study. Used a larger, real mobility trace set, from taxis in Shanghai. Examine the implications of our findings in the design of VANET routing protocols by implementing in ns-3 two routing protocols (GPCR & VADD). Updated the bibliography section with new research work

Optimisation of Mobile Communication Networks - OMCO NET

The mini conference “Optimisation of Mobile Communication Networks” focuses on advanced methods for search and optimisation applied to wireless communication networks. It is sponsored by Research & Enterprise Fund Southampton Solent University. The conference strives to widen knowledge on advanced search methods capable of optimisation of wireless communications networks. The aim is to provide a forum for exchange of recent knowledge, new ideas and trends in this progressive and challenging area. The conference will popularise new successful approaches on resolving hard tasks such as minimisation of transmit power, cooperative and optimal routing

A Mini Review of Peer-to-Peer (P2P) for Vehicular Communication

In recent times, peer-to-peer (P2P) has evolved, where it leverages the capability to scale compared to server-based networks. Consequently, P2P has appeared to be the future distributed systems in emerging several applications. P2P is actually a disruptive technology for setting up applications that scale to numerous concurrent individuals. Thus, in a P2P distributed system, individuals become themselves as peers through contributing, sharing, and managing the resources in a network. In this paper, P2P for vehicular communication is explored. A comprehensive of the functioning concept of both P2P along with vehicular communication is examined. In addition, the advantages are furthermore conversed for a far better understanding on the implementation