An architecture integrating stationary and mobile roadside units for providing communication on intelligent transportation systems

In this work we investigate the benefits of an hybrid architecture integrating both mobile roadside units, and stationary roadside units supporting the operation of vehicular networks. Since traffic fluctuates, an architecture employing just stationary roadside units might not be able to properly support the network operation all the time. Similarly, an architecture composed just of mobile roadside units may lack part of the robustness provided by stationary roadside units. Furthermore, the traffic fluctuations are limited by the underlying road network, and the road networks do not change so often as traffic does. Thus, it seems straight full to assume that a set of roadside units will always be left stationary, while other roadside units will need to roam along the road network. As major roads counts on a higher transportation capacity, they tend to be very popular routes, and they are natural candidates for receiving the stationary roadside units. On the other hand, we may rely on mobile roadside units for handling roads presenting a high traffic variation. In this work we use the realistic vehicular mobility trace of Cologne, Germany, and we model the allocation of the roadside units as a Maximum Coverage Problem. Our results demonstrate the hybrid deployment increases the number of covered vehicles up to 45%.