Cooperative information forwarding in vehicular networks subject to channel randomness

This paper investigates the information dissemination process in wireless communication networks formed by vehicles. As vehicles are moving constantly, a vehicular ad-hoc network exhibits a highly-dynamic network topology and a fast-changing radio environment. These distinguishing characteristics result in random and unreliable wireless connections between vehicles. Consequently, vehicles need to work cooperatively to disseminate a piece of information to the destination. This paper analyses cooperative information forwarding schemes where each vehicle determines whether or not to forward a received packet in a decentralized manner, without the costly or even impractical demand for the knowledge of network topology. Considering a generic wireless connection model incorporating wireless channel randomness, analytical results are derived for the probability of successful delivery and the expected number of packet forwardings. Moreover, analysis is conducted on the optimal information forwarding scheme that meets a pre-designated probability of successful delivery objective using the minimum number of packet forwardings.