Improving Intelligent Transportations Systems Through Analytical Investigation of Macroscopic Traffic Flow Model in Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks(VANETS)

Abstract

In recent times, wireless communication has witnessed unprecedented growth due mainly to advances in instrumentation and computer science. Substantial research efforts have been devoted to exploring the application of Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) within the context of vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) to ensure safety and for an efficient and integrated transport network. Vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communication in VANETs poses many challenges. In sparse as well as in dense networks. V2V communication can result in intermittent connectivity and broadcast storm problems. Finding solutions to these challenges in an infrastructure-less vehicular ad hoc network (VANETs) with safety and non-safety applications is quite complex. These limitations lead to the analytical investigations of the macroscopic traffic flow model to understand the effect of these spatio-temporal variations in traffic density while varying the value of the sensitivity factor for a two-vehicle interaction, λ at different time intervals during each simulation. The result from this simulation is used to develop Congestion Control Models in the congested network and Honeycomb Model in a sparsely connected network for improved performance in VANETs. The variation in the value of λ affects traffic flow in vehicles. The analytical investigation is implemented in MATLAB in which vehicular density is constant and the value of λ varies directly from 1 to 10 within the time intervals in sparse and dense network conditions. The simulation result in dense network indicates vehicular trajectories when λ increases with time.