Relieving the Wireless Infrastructure: When Opportunistic Networks Meet Guaranteed Delays

Major wireless operators are nowadays facing network capacity issues in striving to meet the growing demands of mobile users. At the same time, 3G-enabled devices increasingly benefit from ad hoc radio connectivity (e.g., Wi-Fi). In this context of hybrid connectivity, we propose Push-and-track, a content dissemination framework that harnesses ad hoc communication opportunities to minimize the load on the wireless infrastructure while guaranteeing tight delivery delays. It achieves this through a control loop that collects user-sent acknowledgements to determine if new copies need to be reinjected into the network through the 3G interface. Push-and-Track includes multiple strategies to determine how many copies of the content should be injected, when, and to whom. The short delay-tolerance of common content, such as news or road traffic updates, make them suitable for such a system. Based on a realistic large-scale vehicular dataset from the city of Bologna composed of more than 10,000 vehicles, we demonstrate that Push-and-Track consistently meets its delivery objectives while reducing the use of the 3G network by over 90%.Comment: Accepted at IEEE WoWMoM 2011 conferenc

Sporadic cloud-based mobile augmentation on the top of a virtualization layer: a case study of collaborative downloads in VANETs

Current approaches to Cloud-based Mobile Augmentation (CMA) leverage (cloud-based) resources to meet the requirements of rich mobile applications, so that a terminal (the so-called application node or AppN) can borrow resources lent by a set of collaborator nodes (CNs). In the most sophisticated approaches proposed for vehicular scenarios, the collaborators are nearby vehicles that must remain together near the application node because the augmentation service is interrupted when they move apart. This leads to disruption in the execution of the applications and consequently impoverishes the mobile users’ experience. This paper describes a CMA approach that is able to restore the augmentation service transparently when AppNs and CNs separate. The functioning is illustrated by a NaaS model where the AppNs access web contents that are collaboratively downloaded by a set of CNs, exploiting both roadside units and opportunistic networking. The performance of the resulting approach has been evaluated via simulations, achieving promising results in terms of number of downloads, average download times, and network overheadMinisterio de Educación y Ciencia | Ref. TIN2017-87604-

Quality of Assessment in Connected Vehicles

In recent years, there has been a huge interest in Machine-to-Machine connectivity under the umbrella of Internet of Things (IoT). With the UK Government looking to trial autonomous (driverless) cars this year, connected vehicles will play a key part in improving and managing existing road safety and congestion, leading to a new generation of intelligent transport systems. This is also well aligned to the current initiatives by the automotive industry to improve the driver’s experience on-board. However, the wireless channels most suitable for this application have not been standardized. In this paper, we review the wireless channels suitable for vehicle-2-vehicle (V2V) and Vehicle–to-x (V2x) connectivity. We further present preliminary analysis on the factors that impact the Quality of Service (QoS) of connected vehicles. We use the open access GEMV2 data to carry out Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) and Principal Component Analysis (PCA) on the link quality and found that both line of sight and non line of sight has a significant impact on the link quality. The work presented here will help in the development of connected vehicle network (CVN) prediction model and control for V2V and V2x connectivity. It will further contribute towards unfolding and testing key research questions in the context of connected vehicles which may otherwise be overlooked

Quality of Assessment in Connected Vehicles

In recent years, there has been a huge interest in Machine-to-Machine connectivity under the umbrella of Internet of Things (IoT). With the UK Government looking to trial autonomous (driverless) cars this year, connected vehicles will play a key part in improving and managing existing road safety and congestion, leading to a new generation of intelligent transport systems. This is also well aligned to the current initiatives by the automotive industry to improve the driver’s experience on-board. However, the wireless channels most suitable for this application have not been standardized. In this paper, we review the wireless channels suitable for vehicle-2-vehicle (V2V) and Vehicle–to-x (V2x) connectivity. We further present preliminary analysis on the factors that impact the Quality of Service (QoS) of connected vehicles. We use the open access GEMV2 data to carry out Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) and Principal Component Analysis (PCA) on the link quality and found that both line of sight and non line of sight has a significant impact on the link quality. The work presented here will help in the development of connected vehicle network (CVN) prediction model and control for V2V and V2x connectivity. It will further contribute towards unfolding and testing key research questions in the context of connected vehicles which may otherwise be overlooked

Streaming Content from a Vehicular Cloud

International audienceNetwork densification via small cells is considered as a key step to cope with the data tsunami. Caching data at small cells or even user devices is also considered as a promising way to alleviate the backhaul congestion this densification might cause. However, the former suffers from high deployment and maintenance costs, and the latter from limited resources and privacy issues with user devices. We argue that an architecture with (public or private) vehicles acting as mobile caches and communication relays might be a promising middle ground. In this paper, we assume such a vehicular cloud is in place to provide video streaming to users, and that the operator can decide which content to store in the vehicle caches. Users can then greedily fill their playout buffer with video pieces of the streamed content from encountered vehicles, and turn to the infrastructure immediately when the playout buffer is empty, to ensure uninterrupted streaming. Our main contribution is to model the playout buffer in the user device with a queuing approach, and to provide a mathematical formulation for the idle periods of this buffer, which relate to the bytes downloadedfrom the cellular infrastructure. We also solve the resulting content allocation problem, and perform trace based simulations to finally show that up to 50% of the original traffic could be offloaded from the main infrastructure

Planning and Designing Walkable Cities: A Smart Approach

Walking may be considered one of the most sustainable and democratic ways of travelling within a city, thus providing benefits not only to pedestrians but also to the urban environment. Besides, walking is also one of the means of transport most likely subjected to factors outside an individual\u2019s control, like social or physical abilities to walk and the presence of comfortable and safe street infrastructures and services. Therefore, improving urban conditions provided to pedestrians has positive impacts on walkability. At the same time technological solutions and innovations have the power to encourage and support people to walk by overcoming immaterial barriers due to a lack of information or boring travel and they give to decision makers the possibility to gain data to understand how and where people travel. Merging these two dimensions into a unique approach can drastically improve accessibility, attractiveness, safety, comfort and security of urban spaces. In this context, this paper aims to draw a more multifaceted context for walkability, where new technologies assume a key role for introducing new approaches to pedestrian paths planning and design and thus for enhancing this mode of transport. Indeed, by combining more traditional spatial-based and perceptual analysis of the urban environment with technological applications and social media exploitation there will be room to better support the decision on and to enhance satisfaction of walking as well as to easier plan and design more walkable cities

Dynamic wireless mobile framework for distributed collaborative real-time information generation and control systems

Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) have only recently discovered the exciting possibilities in the nomadic and ubiquitous computing space to build a new generation of information systems by allowing the vehicle to act both as a carrier and consumer of wireless (and thus omnipresent) information. Wide deployment of such ITS systems may eventually allow for more dynamic and efficient transportation systems, which can contribute in several ways towards greater economic growth whilst respecting environmental sustainability. A great number of researchers have dedicated considerable time and resources to tackling traffic related issues by utilising the new wireless capabilities enabled by ITS; such initiatives cover a wide range of applications such as safety, knowledge sharing and infotainment. Indicative of the extent of such efforts is the plethora of research projects initiated by many national and multi-national organisations such as the EU Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development. To achieve their goals, proposed solutions from such organisations depend on the development and deployment of intelligent wireless mobile communication systems, where data dissemination issues make the prospect of efficient and effective communication a challenging proposition. Presently, Car-to-Car and Car-to-Infrastructure communications are two distinct avenues that make possible efficient and reliable delivery of messages via direct radio links in traffic areas. In all cases, high quality of communication performance is desirable for a communication system composed mostly of roaming participants; such a system needs to be dynamic, flexible and infrastructure-less. Consequently, Mobile Ad hoc Network (MANET)-based networks are a natural fit to ITS