A rate control video dissemination solution for extremely dynamic vehicular ad hoc networks

Video dissemination to a group of vehicles is one of the many fundamental services envisioned for Vehicular Ad hoc Networks, especially as a building block for entertainment applications. For this purpose, in this paper we describe VoV, a video dissemination protocol that operates under extremely dynamic road traffic conditions. Contrary to most existing approaches that focus exclusively on always-connected networks and tackle the broadcast storm problem inherent to them, VoV is designed to operate under any kind of road traffic condition. We propose a new geographic-based broadcast suppression mechanism that gives a higher priority to rebroadcast to vehicles inside especial forwarding zones. Furthermore, vehicles store and carry received messages in a local buffer in order to forward them to vehicles that were not covered by the first dissemination process, probably as a result of collisions or intermittent disconnections. Finally, VoV employs a rate control mechanism that sets the pace at which messages must be transmitted according to the perceived network data traffic, thus avoiding channel overloading. Therefore, VoV adapts not only to the perceived road traffic condition, but also to the perceived channel quality. When compared to two related and well-accepted solutions–ABSM and AID–under Manhattan grid and real city scenarios, we show that, overall, our proposal is more efficient in terms of message delivery, delay and overhead.