On the achievable throughput of cooperative vehicular networks

Due to the time-varying channel conditions and dynamic topology of vehicular networks attributable to the high mobility of vehicles, data dissemination in vehicular networks, especially for content of large-size, is challenging. In this paper, we propose a cooperative communication strategy for vehicular networks suitable for dissemination of large-size content and investigate its achievable throughput. The proposed strategy exploits the cooperation of vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) communications, vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communications and the mobility of vehicles to facilitate the transmission. Detailed analysis is provided to characterize the data dissemination process using this strategy and a closed-form result is obtained on its achievable throughput, which reveals the relationship between major performance-impacting parameters such as distance between infrastructure, radio ranges of infrastructure and vehicles, transmission rates of V2I and V2V communications and vehicular density. Simulation and numerical results show that the proposed strategy significantly increases the throughput of vehicular networks even when the traffic density is low. The result also gives insight into the optimum deployment of vehicular network infrastructure to maximize throughput.