Design and Analysis of an Infrastructure-Less Framework for Lane Positioning, Tracking, and Requesting through Vehicular Sensor Networks

In this letter, we design and analyze an infrastructure-less framework for lane positioning, tracking, and requesting through vehicle-to-vehicle communications. The proposed framework involves applying vehicular sensor networks to localize the lane position of vehicles on road segments. It enables vehicles equipped with image sensors to detect the current lane location without using a global positioning system, which may give an inaccurate location, and without the need for roadside infrastructures, which can be costly. Through image sensors, the proposed framework can maintain the recognition of the lane position of a vehicle. By using vehicle-to-vehicle communications, the proposed framework enables lane position information to be requested from other vehicles in the same lane when required. The proposed framework facilitates the development of innovative applications for the next-generation intelligent transportation systems that rely on high positioning accuracy, such as lane-level cooperative collision avoidance, dynamic traffic control, and intelligent personal navigation systems. An analytical model is derived for estimating the positioning success ratio of the proposed framework. The analytical and simulation results show that the proposed framework can significantly improve the positioning success ratios by cooperative lane requesting.