A Multi-Channel Packet Scheduling Approach to Improving Video Delivery Performance in Vehicular Networks

Abstract

When working with the Wireless Access in Vehicular Environment (WAVE) protocol stack, the multi-channel operation mechanism of the IEEE 1609.4 protocol may impact the overall network performance, especially when using video streaming applications. In general, packets delivered from the application layer during a Control Channel (CCH) time slot have to wait for transmission until the next Service Channel (SCH) time slot arrives. The accumulation of packets at the beginning of the latter time slot may introduce additional delays and higher contention when all the network nodes try, at the same time, to obtain access to the shared channel in order to send the delayed packets as soon as possible. In this work, we have analyzed these performance issues and proposed a new method, which we call SkipCCH, that helps the MAC layer to overcome the high contention produced by the packet transmission bursts at the beginning of every SCH slot. This high contention implies an increase in the number of packet losses, which directly impacts the overall network performance. With our proposal, streaming video in vehicular networks will provide a better quality of reconstructed video at the receiver side under the same network conditions. Furthermore, this method has particularly proven its benefits when working with Quality of Service (QoS) techniques, not only by increasing the received video quality but also because it avoids starvation of the lower-priority traffic.