Temporal Reachability in Vehicular Networks

Upcoming mobile network technologies developed in the context of 5G and DSRC are expected to finally legitimize direct data transfers among vehicles as a standard communication paradigm. We investigate fundamental properties of the topology of vehicular networks built on top of these emerging vehicle-to- vehicle communication technologies. Our study yields multiple elements of originality: (i) it addresses temporal connectivity, which has been poorly investigated despite a high relevance for vehicular network operations; (ii) it introduces exact but computationally efficient models of the temporal connectivity of vehicular networks; (iii) it evaluates the proposed models in urban settings that exhibit an unprecedented combination of dependability, scale and generality of vehicular mobility. This approach lets us unveil an apparent scale- and city-invariant law of temporal reachability in vehicular networks. Finally, we open our original scenarios to the research community, so as to ensure reproducibility of our results and foster further investigations of vehicular network performance.