Delivery delay analysis for roadside unit deployment in intermittently connected VANETs

This paper analyzes the information delivery delay for roadside unit deployment in an intermittently connected vehicular network. An analytical model is developed to describe the relationship between the average information delivery delay and the distance between two neighbor RSUs deployed along a road. The derived model considers a straight highway scenario where two RSUs are deployed at a distance without any direct connection and vehicles are sparsely distributed on the road with road condition information randomly generated between the two neighbor RSUs. Moreover, the model takes into account the vehicle speed, the vehicle density, the likelihood of an incident, and the distance between two RSUs. The effectiveness of the derived analytical model is verified through simulation results. Given the delay requirement of some time-critical applications, this model can be used to estimate the maximum distance allowed between two neighbor RSUs, which can provide a reference basis for the deployment of RSUs in such scenarios.