On the capacity of Vehicular ad hoc Networks

In this paper, we study the capacity of Vehicular Ad Hoc NETwork (VANET). Due to the particular topology of such a network, results on the capacity of two dimensionnal ad hoc networks are not convenient. Indeed, the nodes are ditributed on a line (the road or the highway), thus they form a chain of nodes. This particular topology reduces the spatial reuse with regard to two dimensionnal networks. The capacity is then smaller than in classical ad hoc networks. We propose a theoritical bound on the capacity that the VANET can offer to a intervehicle communication. We compare this bound to simulations results. We compare the capacity offers to a CBR flow when two routing protocols (GPSR and DSR) are used. These two routing protocols are representative of two kind of approaches (reactive and geographic) which have been shown efficient in VANET context.