A novel decentralized inter-vehicle communications model based on coalition formation

In Inter-Vehicle Communications, the available bandwidth can be efficiently allocated to several vehicular users in order to reduce the cost paid for using the bandwidth. Generally, this allocated bandwidth is used to transfer several types of data intended for the vehicular users. However, the efficient utilization of these shared resources is still a challenge in Vehicular Ad hoc Networks. In this paper, we formulate a coalition formation model to analyze the state in which numerous vehicles cooperate to share the available bandwidth. The proposed model aims to maximize the overall bandwidth and minimize the cost of bandwidth reservations over channels in decentralized Inter-Vehicle Communications. The simulation results have proven that allocating the available bandwidth using coalition formation achieves an average success rate up to 73.3%. Also, vehicles can achieve higher revenues by forming feasible coalitions to gain their goals.