Adaptive video streaming with inter-vehicle relay for highway VANET scenario

Video is a desirable medium to provide traffic information, news, advertisements, etc. to people on-the-road. Due to the high mobility and dynamic topology of VANET, an open question is whether it is feasible to support video streaming services using license-free wireless communications between vehicles and road-side-units. In this paper, using the advanced scalable video coding (SVC), we propose an adaptive video streaming scheme for video streaming services in the highway scenario. Relying on cooperative relay among vehicles, a vehicle can download video data using a direct link or a multi-hop path to the RSUs. Considering the current download speed and the receiver buffer level, the proposed scheme can request an appropriate number of video enhancement layers to improve video quality of experience (QoE). Simulation results with real video traces have demonstrated the effectiveness of the proposed scheme which can make a good tradeoff among the perceived video quality, the startup latency and the interruption ratio.