Quality Assessment of VANETs-Supported Video Dissemination of Critical Urban Events

Abstract

In the video transmission of critical urban events, e.g., heart attacks, supported by VANETs, intermittent connections, delays, packet losses, and the number of vehicles in collaboration naturally impair the dissemination of data, and hence affect the quality of received video at the destination. Crowdsensing solutions become a real option in helping to handle these events. In this paper, we evaluate the impact of the characteristics of urban VANETs on the human perception of the spatio-temporal context from monitored videos of critical events. We use the MINUET system to assess the quality of videos disseminated and delivered to city authorities, using QoS and QoE metrics, and under different traffic scenarios. Simulated results indicate the system achieves quality levels from satisfactory to good in most of the evaluated scenarios, i.e. average PSNR values between [25-40]dB and average SSIM values between [0.5-1]. In addition, even in adverse situations for detecting the event, video was delivered with a level of quality sufficient to recognize the event.