On the Capacity of a Linear Vehicular Network

Intelligent Transport Systems envision many applications relying only on vehicle-to-vehicle communications. Depending on the application (road safety, driver information, infotainment...), the requirements are different in terms of throughput, delay and loss rate. This paper explores the performances issues of a convoy of vehicles on the road, in order to estimate the capacity of such linear vehicular network. Among other results, we show that, while the loss rate is important, it is possible to rely on the vehicular network to relay informations issued from on-board sensors.