Notations.

The Internet of Vehicles (IoV) makes it possible to transmit information in real time between vehicles, providing a modern approach for autonomous driving, traffic safety, and other applications. Roadside units (RSUs) contribute to the enhancement of IoV’s reliability and transmission efficiency, while mitigating the impact of low IoV penetration. The objective of RSU deployment optimization is to minimize the total cost with the premise of ensuring IoV reliability. We construct a distance-based reliability measure for IoV, which is expressed as the proportion of information transmitted in online mode to the total transmission distance. The distance distribution of the online and offline transmissions is computed using the information transmission model. A bi-objective optimization model is established with the objectives of minimizing the cost of RSU and maximizing the reliability of IoV. Meanwhile, based on variable probabilities of crossover and mutation, a nondomination level-based NSGA-II (NNSGA-II) is designed to improve the solving efficiency. Numerical results show the advantage of the proposed model over the models evaluated with the objective of reducing transmission time can be up to 18% in different traffic scenarios, and NNSGA-II is significantly more computationally efficient.