A fountain codes-based data dissemination technique in vehicular Ad-hoc networks

In this paper we propose a data dissemination technique based on Fountain codes, that is particularly suitable for vehicular environments, where mobility and connectivity issues often occur. We investigate the reliability of a real-time service and data delivery for multicast transmission over lossy Vehicular Ad-hoc NETworks (VANETs). The proposed technique represents the next work of a previous approach initially applied to traditional Mobile Ad-Hoc NETworks (MANETs). This technique combines application layer channel coding based on Luby Transform (LT) codes with multicast delivery in a wireless network exploiting PUMA (Protocol for Unified Multicasting through Announcements). The main goal is to achieve a real-time service with an high quality level in a lossy vehicular network environment. The rateless property, the ability of adapt the code on-the-fly, makes Fountain codes an attractive solution for data broadcast/multicast applications, like the well-known comfort applications. In a VANET scenario characterized by dynamic topology conditions, packet losses and disconnections, the proposed approach leads to an improvement on arrival times of packets towards destination vehicles. Simulation results provide the effectiveness of our technique compared with traditional data dissemination approach.