National PhD Scheme

4 years research project funded by the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL), in partnership with Imperial College, to maximise the impact of science and technology for the defence of the UK.

Vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs)

are wireless networks consistent of moving vehicles without any fixed infrastructure. Recently, these types of networks have gained importance because of their usefulness for several applications. For example, the need for rapid deployment of communication, when there is a lack of a preexisting infrastructure, makes VANETs the perfect solution in case of emergency rescue and military operations. Due to the lack of infrastructure every single device has to be able to relay data to other nodes at the same time as it is handling its own communication. Another significant aspect is the dynamic topology as a consequence of the high mobility of the nodes, which is one of the main obstacles when designing a vehicular ad hoc network. Unfortunately, previous studies on the node connectivity in ad hoc networks usually assume that nodes are randomly distributed either stationary or move randomly, which does not happen in practical situations. In fact, factors such as road topologies, traffic laws and density, roads capacity affect the mobility of vehicles. Drivers behaviour and interaction with each other also contribute to the vehicle mobility pattern. Simulating vehicle traffic is a hard task. There are recent works that aim to model connectivity of vehicles on a one-dimensional and multi-lane highway. However, these studies lack realistic traffic models to adequately capture the dynamics of node density and space headway between vehicles, which greatly affect communication quality, especially on urban roads.