Vehicular Wireless Burst Switching Network: Enhancing Rural Connectivity

This paper introduces a network architecture called vehicular wireless burst switching (VWBS). The main objective of this architecture is to provide low-cost connectivity solution for isolated and dispersed regions with no networks infrastructure. The proposed architecture is based on the concept of delay tolerant networks (DTN) and can be applied to various scenarios, including rapid deployment of emergency communication systems when all communication links have failed. In this paper, we present an overview of VWBS networks and show how their performance, in terms of average packet delays, can be improved using store-and-forward devices called relay nodes. Furthermore, we introduce several heuristic algorithms, which can be used to place minimum number of relay nodes. Through computer simulations, we compare the performance of the algorithms and their tradeoffs. We conclude our work by examining possible open research issues in VWBS.