Information Propagation for Location-based MAC Protocols in Vehicular Networks

We consider a vehicular ad hoc network designed for vehicles to exchange information collected by on-board sensors. A goal of this system is to quickly broadcast information to as many vehicles as possible. For this purpose, a family of location-based medium access control (MAC) protocols are given in which vehicles broadcast information when they drive through given transmission areas. We then study the information propagation under these protocols for a simple one-dimensional transportation network. Specifically, we calculate the average time for a message to propagate a given distance and the probability a message reaches that distance.