On Trajectory-Based Network Construction for Time-Constrained Data Delivery in VANETs

摘要

This paper discusses the time-constrained data delivery problem in vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs). The unique characteristics of the network present great challenges to the issue. First, there are no always-connected forwarding routes between vehicles. Second, there is an intrinsic tradeoff between communication cost and delivery quality. Third, there is great uncertainty about vehicular mobilities. Exploiting vehicular trajectories, we present a constructive approach called TNC to tackle the challenges. In TNC, contact-based data forwarding and communication connections through the mobile network are incorporated. TNC first predicts the time-stamped inter-vehicle contacts and establishes expected contact graph, based on which it then computes the configuration for enhancing the connectivity of the network while introducing minimum number of mobile communication connections. Extensive simulations based on three real vehicular traces collected from 2,000 taxis and 1,400 buses in Shanghai, and 2,500 taxis in Shenzhen have been conducted and results demonstrate the efficacy of our approach.