Cooperative vehicular networks will play a vital role in the coming years to implement various intelligent transportation related applications. Both vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) communications will be needed to reliably disseminate information in a vehicular network. In this regard, a roadside unit (RSU) equipped with multiple antennas can improve the network capacity. While the traditional approaches assume antennas to experience independent fading, we consider a more practical uplink scenario where antennas at the RSU experience correlated fading. In particular, we evaluate the packet error probability for two renowned antenna correlation models, i.e., constant correlation (CC) and exponential correlation (EC). We also consider intermediate cooperative vehicles for reliable communication between the source vehicle and the RSU. Here, we derive closed-form expressions for packet error probability which help quantify the performance variations due to fading parameter, correlation coefficients and the number of intermediate helper vehicles. To evaluate the optimal transmit power in this network scenario, we formulate a Stackelberg game, wherein, the source vehicle is treated as a buyer and the helper vehicles are the sellers. The optimal solutions for the asking price and the transmit power are devised which maximize the utility functions of helper vehicles and the source vehicle, respectively. We verify our mathematical derivations by extensive simulations in MATLAB.
Index TermsAntenna correlation, Stackelberg game, Vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I), Vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V).
I. INTRODUCTIONUbiquitous vehicular connectivity is expected to be an essential paradigm shift for guaranteeing driver safety and preventing road accidents [1], [2]. However, with the rapid spread of information and communication technology, especially in the domain of consumer electronics, there is a need to improve different aspects of vehicular networks. Cooperative communication among vehicles is one of these aspects. Cooperative vehicular networking is a key enabler for intelligent transportation systems and smart cities. Many traffic management and passenger comfort applications can be implemented by means of efficient and reliable data exchange among vehicles [3]- [5]. Although single-hop communication is typically used for the periodic exchange of mobility information among neighbor vehicles, multi-hop communications can be used to propagate emergency notifications within a large geographical area. Moreover, the multi-hop communication approach is favored when line-of-sight does not exist between source and destination; providing a mechanism to combat the attenuation of wireless signals. To ensure widespread vehicular network connectivity, a roadside unit (RSU) is placed at various strategic locations along the road [6], [7]. An RSU typically comprises of multiple short-range antennas [8] to provide uninterrupted connectivity between vehicles in the transmission range, also termed as vehicle-to-infrastruc...