A Markovian model for assessing the consistency of vehicular storage systems

In this paper, we evaluate the suitability of the vehicular devices for supporting data storage and distribution applications. Vehicular storage systems have recently emerged as means for making the information related to the vehicular environment available to vehicular users. Information could either be collected by sensors mounted onboard vehicles or coming from the surrounding environment. Modeling a vehicular data storage and distribution system requires the introduction of a number of parameters, such as the vehicle concentration and transmission range, the value of which may determine the suitability or unsuitability of the vehicular environment for establishing a communication infrastructure with the desired quality. In this paper we show how to solve this problem by resorting to a Markovian model and some results achieved through its application.