Communication-Aware Position Control for Mobile Nodes in Vehicular Networks

In this paper, we study a communication-aware position control problem for mobile nodes in vehicular networks, in which the positions of some nodes can be controlled considering the network performance. We model the average achievable data rate of a link between two nodes as a function of the distance between the two nodes, i.e., as a function of positions of the two nodes. We then try to find the positions of some nodes whose positions can be controlled so as to maximize the minimum weighted average data rate among those of all links in the network. To tackle this problem, we take two approaches: optimization and game theoretic approaches. In the optimization theoretic approach, even though the optimization problem is formulated as non-convex optimization, we can develop algorithms for the optimal solution. However, since those algorithms are centralized algorithms, which may not be applicable to some cases such as vehicular ad-hoc networks (VANETs), we also use the game theoretic approach to develop distributed algorithms. In addition to developing algorithms, we also analyze and compare the performances of our algorithms, showing that the game theoretic approach could provide not only distributed algorithms but also efficient algorithms in our problem.