Topology-Age-Aware Cooperative Awareness in Vehicular Ad-Hoc Networks

2026-08-02

AI Summary

This study addresses the critical need for timely information in vehicular ad hoc networks to support safety-critical decisions by proposing a timeliness-aware collaborative broadcasting (TA-CB) strategy. The approach uniquely integrates information age (AoI) with network topology, enabling roadside units to schedule transmitter–receiver pairs based on aggregate AoI reduction gains. Two complementary mechanisms are devised: a local scheme leveraging two-hop neighbor counts and a global scheme utilizing betweenness centrality to optimize broadcast decisions. Evaluated under both random and clustered network topologies, TA-CB significantly outperforms non-collaborative baselines. Notably, in clustered scenarios, both variants of TA-CB markedly surpass the baseline age-aware collaborative broadcasting (A-CB), with each demonstrating distinct advantages under varying network conditions.

Abstract

In vehicular ad-hoc networks (VANETs), maintaining the freshness of status information among vehicles is critical for enabling timely and reliable safety-related decisions. In this paper, we consider the problem of scheduling cooperative status broadcasting in VANETs, where vehicles are allowed to broadcast not only their own updates but also the updates of other vehicles. We propose the age-aware cooperative broadcasting (A-CB) policy, in which a road-side unit (RSU) schedules target-sender pairs based on the total achievable age-gain over the sender's network links. Moreover, through exploiting the network topology, we introduce two topology-age-aware cooperative broadcasting (TA-CB) policies; the Local TA-CB that weights links according to the number of second-hop neighbors, and the Global TA-CB that leverages the betweenness centrality of vehicles to prioritize broadcasting decisions. The proposed policies are evaluated under both random and clustered network topologies. Numerical results demonstrate that cooperative policies significantly outperform non-cooperative broadcasting. Notably, in clustered network structures, the Local and the Global TA-CB policies achieve substantial improvements over A-CB, with each outperforming the other under different network conditions.

Problem

• Vehicular Ad-Hoc Networks
• Information Freshness
• Cooperative Broadcasting
• Age of Information
• Network Topology

Innovation

• Age of Information
• Cooperative Broadcasting
• Network Topology
• Betweenness Centrality
• Vehicular Ad-Hoc Networks