Environment-Aware Reinforcement Learning Based VANET Communications Against Jamming and Interference

The jamming and interference in vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) depend on the channel states of vehicles from the ambient radio transmitter, which in turn result from the topologies and radio features. In this paper, we propose an environment-aware reinforcement learning (RL)-based VANET communication scheme against jamming and interference that applies the post decision state algorithm to optimize the power allocation and channel selection without relying on the jamming attack model. This scheme exploits the environment information in the state formulation due to the traffic density and their locations reflect the interference level, as well as the location of transmission vehicle combined with building structure and heights indicate the channel gain and shadowing. The proposed post decision state-based RL method employs the estimated future communication distances of the moving vehicles to accelerate the learning process. We provide the performance bounds of the energy consumption, bit error rate (BER), and utility based on a Nash equilibrium. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme significantly reduces the BER with less energy consumption compared with the benchmark.