Renewal Process of Information Propagation in Delay Tolerant VANETs

The Information propagation process is one the main challenges in delay tolerant networks especially in vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs). A cycle of information propagation in a time-varying vehicular speed situation starts with physical movement of the vehicles as a catch-up process and ends with multihop transmission through connected vehicles as a forwarding process. Based on these two alternating processes information propagation cyclically renews. In the literature of VANET information propagation speed (IPS) is formulated based on one propagation cycle. This motivated us to develop more a realistic analytical model which investigates the average IPS based on the number of renewal cycles that a piece of information needs to be delivered. Using this renewal process, unlike traditional models, the expected length and expected duration of renewal cycles are formulated mathematically and subsequent closed-form equations are proposed for average IPS. The accuracy of the proposed model is confirmed using simulation. The concluded results provide helpful insights towards designing new applications on VANETs.