Optimal access scheme for mobile vehicular small cells in layered heterogenous networks

Vehicular networks have been considered as an important compliment in providing ubiquitous communication services to the future wireless networks. Existing vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) allow the vehicles to access to Internet by dedicated roadside units (RSUs). In order to resolve the problem resulting from limited RSUs, insufficient resources and unsatisfied user experience, we propose to take the vehicles as special vehicular small cells (VSCs) and integrate them with the layered heterogeneous networks. Furthermore, an accordingly optimal access scheme has been designed for VSC to choose the proper access point in a candidate set. Several important factors have been considered, such as quality of service (QoS) requirements, handover frequency, moving speed, security and cost. Simulation results have proved the effectiveness of our proposed scheme in network throughput, packet loss rate and successful access rate.