Extending the LOS Coverage of Vehicular Networks Based on Roadside Units and Vehicle Relays

This paper investigates the benefits of employing vehicle relays by analyzing the increment of the line-of-sight (LOS) coverage based on vehicle relays to enable high-speed communications between roadside user devices, vehicles, and roadside infrastructure. We characterize a unique spatial relationship between roadside units (RSUs) and vehicles by employing the Cox point processes. Then, the LOS coverage from these RSUs is modeled by a Boolean model on the Cox point process. Assuming vehicle relays provide an additional LOS coverage when they are within the RSU LOS coverage, we quantify the growth of the LOS coverage by separately deriving the mean area fractions of the RSU LOS coverage and RSU-plus-relay LOS coverage, respectively. We explicitly provide the gain in the LOS coverage as an integral formula and show that relays increase the LOS coverage area by nearly 50 percent.