Cooperative data dissemination in cellular-VANET heterogeneous wireless networks

Vehicular Ad hoc Networks(VANETs) enable plenty of important applications for vehicles, such as accident prevention and traffic jam avoidance. However, VANETs can hardly provide reliable connectivity between vehicles, which makes data dissemination of the aforementioned applications extremely difficult. Compared with VANETs, 3GPP cellular networks(e.g., LTE), offer much more reliable connectivity. Furthermore, cellular networks ensures timely dissemination in large scales due to the broadcast nature. In this paper, we deploy a cellular-VANET heterogeneous network achitecture to realize efficient data dissemination. In the heterogeneous networks, a part of vehicles are selected as mobile gateways to connect the two kind of networks. Later, we apply the coalition game theory to stimulate vehicles to join coalitions which can maximize the efficient data rate. The simulation results show that, by following the protocol, maximin overall effective data rate can be achieved.