Stochastic characterization of information propagation process in vehicular ad hoc networks

This paper studies the information propagation process in wireless communication networks formed by vehicles traveling on a highway. Corresponding to different lanes of the highway and different types of vehicles, we consider that vehicles in the network can be categorized into a number of traffic streams, where the vehicles in the same traffic stream have the same speed distribution while the speed distributions of vehicles in different traffic streams are different. We analyze the information propagation process of the aforementioned vehicular network and obtain an analytical formula for the information propagation speed (IPS). Using the formula, one can straightforwardly study the impact of parameters such as radio range, vehicular traffic density, vehicular speed distribution, and the time variation of vehicular speed on the IPS. The accuracy of the analytical results is validated using simulations.