A Max Coverage Formulation for Information Dissemination in Vehicular Networks

We consider that a given number of dissemination points (DPs) have to be deployed for disseminating information to vehicles travelling in an urban area. We formulate our problem as a maximum coverage problem (MCP) so as to maximize the number of vehicles that get in contact with the DPs and as a second step with a sufficient amount of time. Since the MCP is NP-hard, we solve it though heuristic algorithms. Evaluation of the proposed solutions in a realistic urban environment shows how knowledge of vehicular mobility plays a major role in achieving an optimal coverage of mobile users, and that simple heuristics provide near-optimal results even in large-scale scenarios.