Real-time density estimation in urban environments by using vehicular communications

Knowing the density of vehicles in a vehicular communications environment is important, as better opportunities for wireless communication can show up. This paper studies the importance of predicting the density of vehicles in vehicular environments to take decisions for enhancing the dissemination of warning messages between vehicles. Moreover, we propose a mechanism which allows the estimation of the vehicular density within a certain urban environment, using as parameters the number of beacons received per vehicle, and the topological characteristics of the environment where the vehicles are located.