Vehicle-assisted data offloading is envisioned to significantly alleviate the problem of explosive growth of mobile data traffic. However, due to the high mobility of vehicles and the frequent disruption of communication links, it is very challenging to efficiently optimize collaborative offloading from a group of vehicles. In this paper, we leverage the concept of Software-Defined Networking (SDN) and propose a software-defined collaborative offloading (SDCO) solution for heterogeneous vehicular networks. In particular, SDCO can efficiently manage the offloading nodes and paths based on a centralized offloading controller. The offloading controller is equipped with two specific functions the hybrid awareness path collaboration (HPC) and the graph-based source collaboration (GSC). HPC is in charge of selecting the suitable paths based on the round-trip time, packet loss rate, and path bandwidth, while GSC optimizes the offloading nodes according to the minimum vertex cover for effective offloading. Simulation results are provided to demonstrate that SDCO can achieve better offloading efficiency compared to the state-of-the-art solutions.
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