Elsevier

Ad Hoc Networks

Volume 5, Issue 8, November 2007, Pages 1272-1283
Ad Hoc Networks

Service capacity in vehicular networks: A resource dissemination analysis

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.adhoc.2007.02.023Get rights and content

Abstract

The support of peer-to-peer (P2P) resource sharing in dynamic scenarios is one of the most challenging research fields for both its expected commercial and technological impact on everyday life. To this purpose, resource sharing within a vehicular network can facilitate an acceleration in the dissemination process and increase the number of nodes in the network which possess a certain resource and can share it with other devices. This performance parameter, denoted as service capacity, has been recently studied in the context of wired P2P networks but its calculation in mobile networks is still an open problem. In this paper, we perform a service capacity analysis in P2P vehicular networks where nodes move according to traffic patterns which consider realistic car interactions such as acceleration, breaking and inter-car minimum safety distance maintenance and, while moving, perform resource dissemination. More specifically, we will present a service capacity analysis which considers the impact of traffic correlation and node density on the number of mobile vehicles in the network possessing a certain resource. Finally, we will also estimate the impact of link errors on the probability that a resource is propagated up to a certain location, in a given time.

Introduction

In the last couple of years there has been an increasing interest in vehicular communications, especially that concerning car security. This is also demonstrated by the numerous projects both in the US and in Europe (for example, the Vehicle Safety Communications Consortium [17], the PReVENT project [18] and the Network on Wheels project [19]) which aim at increasing road safety.

In addition, emerging peer-to-peer (P2P) wireless applications currently represent an interesting and challenging networking research field. This is due to the considerable emergence of communities which require the support of file sharing applications (for example, tourist information, map exchange, movie trailers and MP3 exchange, etc.) and also to enable nomadic scenarios where infrastructure is not available. In this perspective, node mobility in vehicular networks can be used to efficiently and rapidly disseminate resources among network nodes. In contrast to more traditional ad hoc networks, vehicular networks do not suffer energy constraints. Thus, network design need not consider reduction in energy consumption but, instead, should mainly focus on supporting rapid resource dissemination and increasing the number of nodes available to share resources. Some papers addressing the topic of mobile ad hoc networks capacity evaluation have appeared recently [5], [8]. Other, some papers dealing with evaluation of the number of peers available to serve a document at a given time, denoted as service capacity, in a P2P wired scenario, have also been proposed [15]. Only recently, a few papers addressing the problem of service capacity estimation in a P2P mobile network have been proposed [9]. In [9], which is the first work addressing a dynamic scenario, the authors study the problem of service capacity estimation in P2P automotive ad hoc networks where a swarming protocol performs parallel downloads of file’s chunks among nodes of a vehicular network. In this paper, however, node movements are not realistically characterized. Indeed, one of the key problems raised by considering a vehicular network is the need to realistically characterize vehicular nodes mobility and traffic patterns. To this purpose, common random mobility models [2], [1], [20] such as the well known Random Waypoint model proposed for MANET, are still used despite producing unrealistic movement patterns to simulate real vehicle motion [14].

However, more realistic traffic patterns should be considered [6], [7], [11], [12] so as to take into account car interactions in realistic car motion scenarios.

The main contribution of this paper resides in the analysis of the resource dissemination process (such as music files, movie trailers, etc.) running in a vehicular P2P network where nodes move according to realistic traffic patterns which consider both car-to-car and driver-to-car interactions.

In this paper we will focus on a service capacity analysis which tries to relate this performance parameter to nodes’ mobility. This paper will be organized as follows: in Section 3, we will model both the vehicular traffic and the resource dissemination process. Then, in Section 4, we will calculate the service capacity and in Section 5, we will discuss how service capacity is influenced by the resource dissemination process. Finally, in Section 6, some concluding remarks will be drawn.

Section snippets

Related work

Vehicular networks represent an interesting application scenario not only for safety but also for more commercial applications such as file exchange [4]. Recently, in this perspective, some papers addressing the topic of ad hoc network capacity evaluation have appeared [5], [8]. One common limitation underlined in these works is that the real constraint to network capacity is caused by the underlying physical network. Accordingly, in [8], the authors give a bound to the per-node capacity in a

Model

In this section we will describe the vehicular traffic model proposed in [6], [7] and used in the following part of this paper. We will then describe the proposed resource dissemination model used to characterize the resource dissemination process throughout the network. These models will be used in Section 4 to derive the service capacity model.

Service capacity calculation

Let us now apply the derived model to evaluate the service capacity for a P2P vehicular network.

The service capacity we want to evaluate is identified using the definition proposed in [15], i.e., the mean number of vehicles which have a certain resource F. To estimate this parameter we will exploit the results derived in Section 3.

The service capacity NF(z) can be evaluated considering that the number of nodes which possess a resource is given by the product of the hops traveled by the resource

Performance results

In this section we will study system performance in terms of vehicles movement characterization, resource dissemination and service capacity. Performance will be studied and some insights into the applicability to a vehicular scenario will be derived.

Conclusions

In this paper we have proposed an analysis to study the resource dissemination process and the service capacity in a vehicular network. In particular, the analysis developed attempts to relate service capacity to traffic correlation and node density. The proposed approach uses a vehicular traffic model that takes into account realistic car interactions through a probabilistic methodology, accounting for both nodes velocity and density. The proposed model has proved effective in estimating the

Laura Galluccio received her laurea degree in Electrical Engineering from University of Catania, Catania, Italy, in 2001. In March 2005 she completed her Ph.D. in Electrical, Computer and Telecommunications Engineering at the same university under the guidance of Prof. Sergio Palazzo. Since 2002 she is also at the Italian National Consortium of Telecommunications (CNIT), where she has worked and still works as a Research Fellow within the VICOM (Virtual Immersive Communications) and the Satnex

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Cited by (2)

Laura Galluccio received her laurea degree in Electrical Engineering from University of Catania, Catania, Italy, in 2001. In March 2005 she completed her Ph.D. in Electrical, Computer and Telecommunications Engineering at the same university under the guidance of Prof. Sergio Palazzo. Since 2002 she is also at the Italian National Consortium of Telecommunications (CNIT), where she has worked and still works as a Research Fellow within the VICOM (Virtual Immersive Communications) and the Satnex Projects. Her research interests include ad hoc and sensor networks, protocols and algorithms for wireless networks, and network performance analysis.

From May to July 2005 she has been a visiting scholar at the COMET Group, Columbia University, NY under the guidance of Prof. Andrew T. Campbell.

Laura Galluccio served in the Program Committee of the 4th ANWIRE International Workshop on Wireless Internet and Reconfigurability, the 20th International Symposium on Computer and Information Sciences (ISCIS 05), IFIP Networking 2006 and ACM Mobihoc 2006.

Alessandro Leonardi was born in Catania on July 1977. He received the laurea degree in Electrical Engineering and the Ph.D. in Computer and Telecommunications Engineering from the University of Catania, Italy, in 2002 and 2007, respectively. From September 2005 to February 2006 he has been a visiting scholar in the Rice Networks Group at Rice University, Houston, TX, under the guidance of Prof. E. Knightly.

Currently he is with the Dipartimento di Ingegneria Informatica e delle Telecomunicazioni (DIIT) of the University of Catania. His current research interests include mobile networks and performance analysis of communication networks.

Antonio Matera was born in Catania on November 1976. He received the laurea degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Catania, Italy, on April 2005. From October 2005 to June 2006 he has been with the Dipartimento di Ingegneria Informatica e delle Telecomunicazioni (DIIT) of the University of Catania as a research engineer. Currently he is working as a network engineer in MEDiterranean Nautilus Italy.

Sergio Palazzo was born in Catania, Italy, on December 12, 1954. He received his degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Catania in 1977. Since 1987 he has been at the University of Catania, where he is now a Full Professor of Telecommunications Networks. In 1994, he spent the summer at the International Computer Science Institute (ICSI), Berkeley, as a Senior Visitor. He is a recipient of the 2003 Visiting Erskine Fellowship by the University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand. Since 1992, he has been serving on the Technical Program Committee of INFOCOM, the IEEE Conference on Computer Communications. He has been the General Chair of the ACMMobiHoc 2006 Conference and currently is a member of the MobiHoc Steering Committee. He has also been the General Vice Chair of the ACM MobiCom 2001 conference. He currently serves the Editorial Boards of the journals IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking, IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing, Ad Hoc Networks, and Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing. In the recent past, he also was an Editor of the IEEE Wireless Communications Magazine (formerly the IEEE Personal Communications Magazine), and of Computer Networks. His current research interests include mobile systems, wireless and satellite IP networks, intelligent techniques in network control, multimedia traffic modelling, and protocols for the next generation of the Internet.

This work was partially supported by National project WOMEN (Wireless 8O2.16 Multi-antenna mEsh Networks) under grant number 2005093248.

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