Disseminating Large Data in Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks

Abstract

Data dissemination among vehicles is an important problem in a Vehicular Ad Hoc Network (VANET). However, all existing works on data dissemination consider transferring small-sized data, where the entire data can be transferred from a roadside unit (RSU) to a vehicle when the vehicle is passing by it. In this paper, we address the problem of large data transfers among vehicles in a VANET using RSUs and vehicles with finite data storage and transfer capacity. In particular, we formulate two problems, the Maximum Successful Transfers Problem Using RSUs (R-MaxSucTrans) that aims to maximize the number of successful transfers between source and destination vehicles using only RSUs as intermediate nodes, and the Maximum Successful Transfers Problem Using RSUs and Vehicles (RV-MaxSucTrans) that aims to do the same while using both RSUs and other vehicles as intermediate nodes. Offline algorithms are proposed for the two problems. Detailed simulation results are presented to evaluate the performance of the algorithms.