Stochastic Analysis of a Single-Hop Communication Link in Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks

A vehicular ad hoc network (VANET) is a promising addition to our future intelligent transportation systems, which supports various safety and infotainment applications. The high node mobility and frequent topology changes in VANETs impose new challenges in maintaining a long-lasting connection between network nodes. As a result, the lifetime of communication links is a crucial issue in VANET development and operation. This paper presents a probabilistic analysis of the communication link in VANETs for three vehicle density ranges. First, we present the stationary distribution of the communication link length using mesoscopic mobility models. Second, we propose a stochastic microscopic mobility model that captures time variations of intervehicle distances (distance headways). A discrete-time finite-state Markov chain with state-dependent transition probabilities is proposed to model the distance headway. Third, the proposed stochastic microscopic model and first passage time analysis are used to derive the probability distribution of the communication link lifetime. Numerical results are presented to evaluate the proposed model, which demonstrate a close agreement between analytical and simulation results.