Peer-to-peer file sharing in VANETs using TC-MAC

Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks (VANETs) are a form of Mobile Ad Hoc Networks (MANETs) in which vehicles on the road form the nodes of the network. VANETs provide several services to enhance the safety and comfort drivers and passengers. One of the services that VANETs can provide is file sharing between vehicles. Sharing large scale files through the network is a challenging task. Therefore, developing an efficient peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing scheme is important. This paper presents a P2P file sharing scheme for VANETs using TC-MAC, a MAC algorithm for vehicular ad-hoc networks using Time-Division Multiple Access (TDMA) slot reservation based on clustering of vehicles. Using TDMA will reduce collisions and packet drops in the channel, as well as provide fairness in sharing the wireless medium and minimizing the effect of hidden terminals. Our work aims to develop a P2P file sharing algorithm to improve the file downloading time between neighbouring vehicles.