Video broadcasting in vehicular networks

Abstract

Video Broadcasting over Vehicle Ad hoc Networks (VANET) is essential or highly beneficial to a selection of envisioned services. These services range from enhancing safety via the dissemination of video from the scene of an accident, to advertisement of local services or businesses. A number of challenges arise when streaming high quality video over VANET, therefore a comprehensive study was carried out, to select an adequate technique for video dissemination. A robust and efficient routing protocol ensures high quality in video broadcasting over a network with respect to Quality of Service (QoS) and Quality of user Experience (QoE). In this dissertation, a number of routing protocols were analyzed, and finally an adaptive routing protocol was designed. A node decides what action to take depending on the video message type, in order to reduce network congestion. If a video needs only to be transmitted to a small area, the video is transmitted only to nearby vehicles, using vehicleto- vehicle communication. On the other hand, if a video must be transmitted to the whole network, the vehicle will transmit the video to the nearest Road Side Unit (RSU), then the RSU will forward the video to neighbouring RSUs and each RSU will broadcast the video message in their area of transmission. This technique avoids transmission of video to unconcerned cars. The main features of the designed routing protocol were implemented, tested and evaluated accordingly using an appropriate simulation platform, including a traffic simulator and a network simulator, which guarantees a realistic environment. Additionally, results were analysed further and compared with other routing protocols.