The Journal of the Korea Institute
of Intelligent Transport Systems, Vol. 7, No. 6, pp. 12-20
Recent wireless communication technologies are
envisioned as an innovative alternative to solve transportation problems. On ad
hoc networks, as a wireless communication technology, nodes can communicate
data without any infrastructure. In particular, vehicular ad hoc networks
(VANETs), a specific ad hoc network applied to vehicles, enable vehicles
equipped with a communication device to form decentralized traffic information
systems in which vehicles share traffic information they experienced. This
study investigated traffic information dissemination in a VANET-based traffic
information system. For this study, an integrated transportation and
communications simulation framework was developed, and experiments were
conducted with real highway networks and traffic demands. The results showed
that it took 3 minutes in the low traffic density situations (10
vehicle/lane.km) and 43 seconds in the high traffic density condition (40 vehicle/lane.km) to deliver traffic information of 5km
away with 10% market penetration rate. In uncongested traffic conditions,
information seems to be disseminated via equipped vehicles in the opposite
direction. In congested traffic conditions, the sufficient availability of
equipped vehicles traveling in the same direction reduces the chance to use
vehicles in the opposing direction even though it is still possible.