Performance Evaluation of Cooperative LTE-DSRC Vehicular Network

Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS) are fundamental to reaching the concept of smart cities. However, the incoming development of vehicular applications will originate an increase in long-term evolution (LTE) traffic demand, so an approach consists of reducing the cell coverage area. This paper presents an alternative solution to deal with areas with a lack of coverage originated by the deployment of LTE micro-cells. We propose a heterogeneous network algorithm named Multi-Metric Heterogeneous Network Algorithm (MMHNA), which uses LTE and dedicated short-range communications (DSRC) technologies. The objective is to extend the LTE communication range with the support of DSRC technology through a forwarding process. This proposal will allow vehicles to send messages to a server directly connected to the evolved Node B (eNB), i.e., the radio network node for LTE networks, even if the sending vehicle is out of range of the eNB.