Connecting the Autonomous: A Distributed Game Theory Approach for VANET Connectivity

Vehicle networks have very unique characteristics due to the nature of the vehicles, namely, the mobility, storage capacity, and battery life. However, there are many challenges in the reliability of such networks due to the highly rapid topology change. This paper proposes Connecting Autonomous Vehicles(CAV), which is a new decentralized approach for routing autonomous vehicles in order to enhance network coverage. Routes for vehicles are decided based on a cooperative game theoretic problem. We show that allowing the autonomous vehicles to cooperate in a game theory approach enhances the overall network connectivity in a geographical area. We evaluate and validate our design using simulations. The results show that CAV enhances the network connectivity, as it improves it up to 140% compared to regular VANET, while minimally compromising the average travel distance for vehicles.