Improving the Uplink Performance of Drive-Thru Internet via Platoon-Based Cooperative Retransmission

• Published in: IEEE transactions on vehicular technology Vol. 63; no. 9; pp. 4536 - 4545
• Main Authors: Jia, Dongyao, Zhang, Rui, Lu, Kejie, Wang, Jianping, Bi, Zhongqin, Lei, Jingsheng
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York IEEE 01-11-2014; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Ad hoc networks; Analytical models; IEEE 802.11 Standards; Internet; Markov analysis; Markov processes; Mathematical models; Multimedia; Multimedia communications; Roadsides; Throughput; Traffic flow; Transmissions (automotive); Uplink; Uplinking; Vehicles; vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs); multimedia; vehicle platoon; platoon-based cooperative retransmission; Drive-thru Internet
• ISSN: 0018-9545; 1939-9359
• DOI: 10.1109/TVT.2014.2315741

For many vehicular safety applications, it is critical to timely and reliably deliver multimedia data from a traveling vehicle to a roadside access point (AP) in an error-prone vehicular ad hoc network (VANET), which is a typical uplink scenario for drive-thru Internet. To achieve this goal, we propose a cooperative retransmission scheme that exploits a common phenomenon in reality, in which consecutive vehicles can naturally form a platoon to reduce energy consumption. We develop a 4-D Markov chain to model the proposed scheme and analyze the uplink throughput of drive-thru Internet, which also reveals some fundamental relationships among traffic flow, platoon parameters, and system throughput. We conduct extensive simulation in OMNeT++ to validate our scheme and the analytical model. Numerical results show that the proposed platoon-based cooperative retransmission scheme significantly improves the uplink throughput of drive-thru Internet, considerably decreases the total transmission times for a given quantity of upload data, and, hence, achieves a greener mobile multimedia communication.