ExTraCT: Expediting Offloading Transfers Through Intervehicle Communication Transmissions

Vehicular connectivity is considered as one of the most highly anticipated emerging technologies since it promises to transform the automotive sector and have a significant impact on all related markets. Data gathered (and information generated) within and around vehicles will be used to improve road safety, travelling efficiency, and passenger comfort and convenience. However, delivering such data to the infrastructure (to process information and generate intelligence) is a challenging task, mainly due to the very large volume of data traffic produced. A promising approach to support these communication needs is to deliver data traffic opportunistically through the available WiFi APs. Evidently, the intermittent connectivity of these hotspots and the inherent mobility of the vehicles severely limit the volume of traffic sent at any one instance in time. The latter limitation is studied in this paper, where decision policies are derived for vehicle-to-vehicle-assisted offloading to maximize the transmission opportunities and thus expedite data traffic delivery. As illustrated in this paper, these policies are easy to implement in practice and offer significant improvement in vehicular data traffic offloading as compared with opportunistic offloading and basic relaying practices.