Selection of minimum transmit power for network connectivity in Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks

This paper investigates the minimum transmit power required to ensure network connectivity in a Vehicular Ad Hoc Network (VANET). As opposed to the conventional graph theoretic approach, in this paper, the network connectivity problem is analyzed according to a physical layer based quality of service (QOS) constraint. Under this approach, a multi-hop path joining a pair of vehicles in the network is considered to be connected, if and only if the average route bit error rate corresponding to this path is less than or equal to a tolerable limit. The analytical results for the minimum transmit power are corroborated by extensive simulation studies.