Towards video streaming in IoT environments: vehicular communication perspective

Multimedia oriented Internet of Things (IoT) enables pervasive and real-time communication of video, audio and image data among devices in an immediate surroundings. Today's vehicles have the capability of supporting real time multimedia acquisition. Vehicles with high illuminating infrared cameras and customized sensors can communicate with other on-road devices using dedicated short-range communication (DSRC) and 5G enabled communication technologies. Real time incidence of both urban and highway vehicular traffic environment can be captured and transmitted using vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure communication modes. Video streaming in vehicular IoT (VSV-IoT) environments is in growing stage with several challenges that need to be addressed ranging from limited resources in IoT devices, intermittent connection in vehicular networks, heterogeneous devices, dynamism and scalability in video encoding, bandwidth underutilization in video delivery, and attaining application-precise quality of service in video streaming. In this context, this paper presents a comprehensive review on video streaming in IoT environments focusing on vehicular communication perspective. Specifically, significance of video streaming in vehicular IoT environments is highlighted focusing on integration of vehicular communication with 5G enabled IoT technologies, and smart city oriented application areas for VSV-IoT. A taxonomy is presented for the classification of related literature on video streaming in vehicular network environments. Following the taxonomy, critical review of literature is performed focusing on major functional model, strengths and weaknesses. Metrics for video streaming in vehicular IoT environments are derived and comparatively analyzed in terms of their usage and evaluation capabilities. Open research challenges in VSV-IoT are identified as future directions of research in the area. The survey would benefit both IoT and vehicle industry practitioners and researchers, in terms of augmenting understanding of vehicular video streaming and its IoT related trends and issues

VANET Applications: Hot Use Cases

Current challenges of car manufacturers are to make roads safe, to achieve free flowing traffic with few congestions, and to reduce pollution by an effective fuel use. To reach these goals, many improvements are performed in-car, but more and more approaches rely on connected cars with communication capabilities between cars, with an infrastructure, or with IoT devices. Monitoring and coordinating vehicles allow then to compute intelligent ways of transportation. Connected cars have introduced a new way of thinking cars - not only as a mean for a driver to go from A to B, but as smart cars - a user extension like the smartphone today. In this report, we introduce concepts and specific vocabulary in order to classify current innovations or ideas on the emerging topic of smart car. We present a graphical categorization showing this evolution in function of the societal evolution. Different perspectives are adopted: a vehicle-centric view, a vehicle-network view, and a user-centric view; described by simple and complex use-cases and illustrated by a list of emerging and current projects from the academic and industrial worlds. We identified an empty space in innovation between the user and his car: paradoxically even if they are both in interaction, they are separated through different application uses. Future challenge is to interlace social concerns of the user within an intelligent and efficient driving

Performance tuning of a smartphone-based overtaking assistant

ITS solutions suffer from the slow pace of adoption by manufacturers despite the interest shown by both consumers and industry. Our goal is to develop ITS applications using already available technologies to make them affordable, quick to deploy, and easy to adopt. In this paper we introduce EYES, an overtaking assistance solution that provides drivers with a real-time video feed from the vehicle located just in front. Our application thus provides a better view of the road ahead, and of any vehicles travelling in the opposite direction, being especially useful when the front view of the driver is blocked by large vehicles. We evaluated our application using the MJPEG video encoding format, and have determined the most effective resolution and JPEG quality choice for our case. Experimental results from the tests performed with the application in both indoor and outdoor scenarios, allow us to be optimistic about the effectiveness and applicability of smartphones in providing overtaking assistance based on video streaming in vehicular networks

Video-assisted Overtaking System enabled by V2V Communications

V2X (Vehicle-to-Everything) is a promising technology to diminish road hazards and increase driving safety. This thesis focuses in the transmission of video between vehicles (V2V, Vehicle-to-Vehicle) in an overtaking situation, helping drivers to be more aware and less error-prone in these situations. In the implementation, the vehicle reads from vehicle's CAN and GPS data to setup the system, streams his Line of Sight to the overtaking vehicle and uses DSRC as the communication technology

EYES : a novel overtaking assistance system for vehicular networks

Developments in the ITS area are received with great expectation by both consumers and industry. Despite their huge potential benefits, ITS solutions suffer from the slow pace of adoption by manufacturers. In this paper we propose EYES, an ITS system that aims at helping drivers in overtaking. The system autonomously creates a network of the devices running EYES, and provides drivers with a video feed from the vehicle located just ahead, thus presenting a better view of any vehicles coming from the opposite direction and the road ahead. This is specially useful when the front view of the driver is blocked by large vehicles, and thus the decision whether to overtake can be taken based on the visuals provided by the application. We have validated EYES, the proposed overtaking assistance system, in both indoor and realistic scenarios involving vehicular network, and preliminary results allow being optimistic about its effectiveness and applicability

Dissemination of contextual information for assisted driving

Mestrado em Engenharia Electrónica e TelecomunicaçõesDriver assistance systems can be used to improve road and car safety, reduce driving fatigue and provide a more e cient driving experience. An important part of these systems is the communication between vehicles, and vehicle-to-infrastructure communication. This work presents mechanisms enabling driving support, exploring the vehicular network to provide information about the drivers neighborhood. The network is composed by vehicles, tra c signals and xed stations along the road. Each car is equipped with a recording camera, a GPS receiver, as well as communication modules such as WiFi, WAVE and 3G/4G, allowing the exchange of data between the various nodes. The data exchanged is composed by positional data of neighboring vehicles, sensor information from tra c signals and video images incoming from other vehicles. This data is used to facilitate the driver in decision making, but can also provide an overview of the tra c density in the neighborhood. The tra c signals broadcast their position and if they are dynamic (such as tra c lights), their status is also transmitted. The xed stations are equipped with numerous sensors and are used to provide environmental data. The driver can access all the collected data via visual information, on a display screen that contains a map of the neighborhood along with the information available of the nearby nodes. The proposed system is evaluated through real vehicular experiments in two distinct scenarios: urban and highway. The results show that the communication delay is higher in the highway scenario, mainly due to the distance between vehicles and travelling speeds. However, promising results regarding the maximum delay and the average number of retransmissions foresee important inputs for future services of assisted-driving, in general, and carovertaking assistance, in particular.Os sistemas de condução assistida podem ser utilizados para melhorar a segurança rodoviária e automóvel, reduzir a fadiga da condução e proporcionar uma experiência de condução mais e ciente. Uma parte importante desses sistemas e a comunicação entre veículos e comunicação veiculo infraestrutura. Este trabalho propõe mecanismos que permitem o suporte a condução, explorando a rede de veicular para fornecer informações sobre a vizinhança do condutor. A rede e composta por veículos, sinais de transito e estações fixas ao longo da estrada. Cada carro esta equipado com uma camera de gravação, um receptor GPS, bem como módulos de comunicação, como WiFi, WAVE e 3G/4G, permitindo a troca de dados entre os vários nos. Os dados trocados são compostos por dados posicionais de veículos vizinhos, informações sensoriais de sinais de trânsito e imagens de vídeo provenientes de outros veículos. Esses dados s~ao usados para facilitar a tomada de decisões, mas também podem fornecer uma vis~ao geral da densidade de tráfego na vizinhança. Os sinais de transito transmitem a sua posição e, no caso de serem dinâmicos (como semáforos), o seu estado actual também e transmitido. As estações fixas estão equipadas com vários sensores e sao usadas para fornecer dados ambientais. O condutor pode aceder a todos os dados recolhidos através de informações visuais, num ecrã que contém um mapa da sua redondeza junto com a informação disponível dos nos vizinhos. O sistema proposto e avaliado através de testes reais em dois cenários distintos: urbano e auto-estrada. Os resultados mostram que o atraso da comunicação e maior no cenário da auto-estrada, principalmente devido as maiores distancias entre os veículos e as velocidades mais elevadas. No entanto, resultados promissores em relação ao atraso máximo e ao numero médio de retransmissões prevêem contribuições importantes para serviços futuros de condução assistida em geral, e assistência de ultrapassagem de veículos, em particular

Investigating network services abstraction in 5G enabled device-to-device (D2D) communications

The increased demand of data rate by mobile users has led to the evolution of mobile network technologies from the fourth generation to fifth generation (5G). 5G mobile network will support various technologies that will be able to provide low latency, offload traffic and connect vertical industries. Device-to-device (D2D) communications will be used as the underlay technology for 5G network in the offloading of traffic from the cellular network and pushing content closer to the user. With D2D communication, various network services can be implemented to improve spectral efficiency and reduce energy consumption of mobile devices. This paper gives a brief overview of D2D communication and discusses different D2D applications. It proposes a network services abstraction and suggests the mapping of existing studies with the network service abstraction which can be used in the harnessing the development and implementation of D2D communication applications in 5G network. The paper also highlights possible future research for D2D communication in 5G network

Interface Selection in 5G vehicular networks

ITA Negli ultimi anni, la quantità di dati condivisa nel mondo è aumentata esponenzialmente grazie alle applicazioni innovative che riguardano la sicurezza (e.g. domotica, smart cities, controllo del traffico stradale, veicoli autonomi) e i servizi di intrattenimento (e.g. audio e video streaming, ricerche web, videogiochi online di massa). Per supportare questo trend, le principali compagnie nell’industria delle telecomunicazioni stanno sviluppando nuovi standard che saranno disponibili agli utenti finali nei prossimi anni e che saranno presentati come la Quinta Generazione di Reti Cellulari (5G). Questi standard prevedono miglioramenti ai precedenti standard 4G (e.g. LTE, WiMax, DSRC) e tecnologie completamente nuove (e.g. onde millimetriche, comunicazione con luce visibile) per permettere la diffusione di nuovi servizi che richiedono un throughput estremamente alto e una latency bassa. Nella maggior parte dei casi, queste tecnologie dovranno cooperare per assicurare una rete affidabile e accessibile in ogni situazione. Una delle applicazioni più promettenti di questa nuova generazione di tecnologie sono le reti veicolari, un insieme di servizi che includono la comunicazione con le infrastrutture, come il download di un film da Internet o la ricezione di informazioni riguardanti l’ambiente circostante (e.g. un semaforo manda un messaggio a un veicolo in avvicinamento per farlo fermare), o la comunicazione direttamente tra veicoli, in questo caso il datarate è tipicamente più basso dato che l’uso più tipico sarà, per esempio, mandare informazioni riguardanti le macchine più vicine per fare in modo di diminuore il numero di incidenti stradali o gestire il traffico. Questa tesi è focalizzata sulle applicazioni per reti veicolari, l’obiettivo è di analizzare le prestazioni del protocollo IEEE 802.11p a diversi datarate in un tipico scenario V2V, e di confrontare LTE e mmWaves usando una comunicazione V2I in diverse circostanze, per mostrare come ogni tecnologia offra vantaggi per determinate applicazioni mentre non è adatta per altre. ENG In the last years, the amount of data shared among the world is increased exponentially thanks to the novel applications for security (e.g. home automation, smart cities, traffic control, autonomous vehicles) and infotainment (e.g. audio and video streaming, web browsing, massive online videogames). To support this trend, the major companies in the telecommunication industry are developing new standards that will be available to the final users in the next years and that will be presented as the Fifth Generation of Cellular Networks (5G). These standards provide improvements to the 4G standards (e.g. LTE, WiMax, DSRC) and brand new technologies (e.g. mmWaves, Visible Light Communication) to enable new services that demand extremely high throughput and low latency. In most cases these technologies will cooperate to ensure a reliable and accessible network in every situation. One of the most promising applications of these new generation technologies is vehicular networks, a set of services that includes the communication with infrastructures, such as the download of a film from the Internet or the reception of information about the surrounding environment (e.g. a traffic light sends a message to an incoming vehicle to make it stop), or the communication between vehicles, in this case the datarate is tipically lower since the typical use will be, for example, to send information about the closest cars in order to decrease the number of accidents or to manage the traffic. This thesis is focalized on the vehicular networks applications, it aims to analyze the performance of IEEE 802.11p protocol at different datarates in a typical V2V scenario, and to compare LTE and mmWaves using a V2I communication in different circumstances to show how each technology offers advantages for some applications while is not suitable for others