Connectivity in Vehicular Network with Multi-Lane and Exponential Inter-Vehicle Spacing

Abstract

Wireless connectivity is essential for vehicle ad hoc (VANET) communications and it is vital for safety applications. Previous work considered the connectivity of a linear finite network where cars are uniformly distributed in an infinite single dimension which is not realistic. In this paper the connectivity of vehicle network is calculated for single and multi-lane roads. The spaces between cars on the road are considered to follow the exponential distribution in a two dimensional topology. The probability of full connectivity and average network connectivity of VANET with single and multi-lane roads is analysed. For communication range R, car densities of 7cars/R or more were found sufficient to provide high connectivity within the city compared to 12cars/R for highways. Roads with several lanes show higher average connectivity but lower probability of full connectivity. We also investigated the effect of penetration rate on connectivity and found that while penetration rates of 50-100%, 10cars/R provide 80% probability of full connectivity, this reduces to 10% for 5-20% penetration