Relay schemes for intermittently connected vehicular networks with heterogeneous nodes

Targeting for providing communication services in the Intermittently Connected Vehicular Networks (ICVN) where there are no end-to-end communication and routing paths between vehicles, many relaying algorithms and routing protocol have been proposed under the assumption that vehicular nodes in the network are homogeneously distributed in the network with the same contact rate and delivery cost. However, experimental data has found the heterogeneous mobility behaviors with vehicles, and various applications of vehicular networks show that the vehicular nodes belong to different types on the aspects communication ability, mobility behaviors, etc. By utilizing these heterogeneous features to enhance the network performance, we investigate the issue of optinal relay selection schemes for ICVN consisting of heterogeneous vehicular nodes. We investigate both the case of in contact relaying and off contact relaying. In each relaying scenario, we select relay vehicles to optimize in reducing the message transmission cost at the same time satisfying the needed transmission ratio considering both the heterogeneous contact rates and transmission cost. Realistic trace driven simulations demonstrate the effective of the designed relaying schemes in various settings and realistic environment.