Analysis of Access and Connectivity Probabilities in Infrastructure-Based Vehicular Relay Networks

Coverage is an important problem in wireless networks. Together with the access probability, which measures how well an arbitrary user can access a wireless network, in particular VANET, they are often used as major indicators of the quality of the network. In this paper, we investigate the coverage and access probability of the vehicular networks with roadside infrastructure, i.e. base stations. Specifically, we analyze the relation between these key parameters, i.e. the coverage range of base stations, coverage range of vehicles, vehicle density and distance between adjacent base stations, and how these parameters interact with each other to collectively determine the coverage and the access probability. We use the connectivity probability, the probability that all nodes in the network are connected to at least one base station within a designated number of hops, as a measure of the coverage. We derived close-form formulas for the connectivity probability and the access probability for a 1D vehicular network bounded by two adjacent base stations. The analytical results have been validated by simulations. The results in the paper can be used by network operators to design networks with specific service coverage guarantees.