INSTANTANEOUS INFORMATION PROPAGATION IN A TRAFFIC STREAM THROUGH INTER-VEHICLE COMMUNICATION

Advances in wireless technologies have stimulated interest in the use of inter-vehicle communication as the foundation of decentralized advanced transportation information systems. In this seminar, I discuss the reliability of inter-vehicle communication in a traffic stream, dependent on the distribution of equipped vehicles. Assuming that information propagation is instantaneous compared to vehicle movements, I measure reliability as the probability of success that information will travel beyond a specified location. I present stochastic models for both uniform and general traffic streams. In the models, I divide the traffic stream into a series of cells based on the transmission range, clarify the structure of possible most-forward-within-range communication chains, regressively compute the probabilities for information to travel to and beyond a vehicle at a certain hop, and determine the lower bound of the absolute success rate for information to travel beyond a point. Based on the models, I examine the performance of information propagation for different penetration rates, transmission ranges and traffic scenarios that include gaps and shock waves. I conclude by discussing implications and extensions of this effort.