An RSU on/off scheduling mechanism for energy efficiency in sparse vehicular networks

This paper considers energy efficiency of roadside units (RSUs) in sparse vehicular networks and proposes a simple but effective on/off scheduling mechanism for reducing power consumption of an RSU. With the proposed on/off scheduling mechanism, if there is no request received from vehicles, an RSU works alternately between ON and OFF in a periodic manner. If a request is received from a vehicle during the ON state, the RSU will extend its ON state for a basic ON period. Otherwise, if a request arrives during the OFF state, the request will be dropped. An analytical model is derived to estimate the performance of the proposed scheduling mechanism in terms of the request acceptance probability and energy efficiency of an RSU. Simulation results are also presented to verify the accuracy of the derived analytical model.