The Lifetime-based Wireless Routing Scheduling Method for Small Cell Data Offloading

The traditional, small cell data offloading for a vehicle can be enabled when the vehicle is inside the corresponding small cell's signal range. Through utilizing the sidelink communication technique of the cellular vehicle-to-vehicle (C-V2V) and the Multi-access Edge Computing (MEC) architecture, this paper proposes a new small cell data offloading's scenario that can enable small cell data offloading when vehicles are still outside the signal range of the small cell. The proposed method is called Small Cell Offloading Before Entering into the small cell's Signal Range (SCO-BESR). Using the proposed SCO-BESR method, a vehicle X that connects with the macro cell and is not inside the signal range of small cell Z can connect with a vehicle Y inside the signal range of small cell Z using a C-V2V sidelink to have the small cell data offloading through the SCO-BESR path "X-Y-Z cell" until X enters into the signal range of small cell Z. Let each vehicle periodically report its context to the MEC server. Then, the MEC server can periodically perform the matching process between those vehicles that are inside and outside small cell's signal range to establish multiple SCO-BESR paths for multiple vehicles outside the signal range to have the SCO-BESR using the proposed greedy algorithm. The performance evaluation results shown that the proposed SCO-BESR method is better than the traditional small cell data offloading method that can only be enabled when a vehicle is inside the signal range of the corresponding small cell.