V3: a vehicle-to-vehicle live video streaming architecture

We consider the problem of how to enable a live video streaming service to vehicles in motion. In such applications, the video source can be a typical video server or vehicles with appropriate capability, while the video receivers are vehicles that are driving on the road. An infrastructure-based approach relies on strategically deployed base stations and video servers to forward video data to nearby vehicles. While this approach can provide a streaming video service to certain vehicles, it suffers from high base station deployment and maintenance cost. In this paper, we propose V3, an architecture to provide a live video streaming service to driving vehicles through vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) networks. We argue that this solution is practical with the advance of wireless ad-hoc network techniques. With ample engine power, powerful computing capability and considerable data storage that a vehicle can provide, it is reasonable to support data-intensive video streaming service. On the other hand, V2V video streaming can be challenging because: 1) the V2V network may be persistently partitioned, and 2) the video sources are mobile and transient. V3 addresses these challenges by incorporating a novel signaling mechanism to continuously trigger video sources to send video data back to receivers. It also adopts a store-carry-and-forward approach to transmit video data in a partitioned network environment. Several algorithms are proposed to balance the video transmission delay and bandwidth overheads Simulation experiments demonstrate the feasibility of supporting vehicle-to-vehicle live video streaming with acceptable performance.