A QoE-Aware Mechanism to Improve the Dissemination of Live Videos over VANETs

Abstract

Real-time video dissemination over Vehicular Ad-hoc NETworks (VANETs) is challenging due to its strict quality requirements, dynamic network topology, and broadcast environment. Although Statistical Routing Protocols (SRPs) have been applied by using positioning and Quality of Service (QoS) parameters, they are not enough to obtain satisfactory Quality of Experience (QoE) levels in multi-hop video dissemination due to different requirements of multimedia services. This paper introduces the QOe-aware REceiver-based (QORE) mechanism to improve the dissemination of real-time videos in VANETs. QORE employs a QoE-driven Unequal Error Protection (UEP) scheme, namely Interleaving, which mitigates the effects of frame loss by spreading out the bursty losses. Further, QORE can be integrated with SRPs to offer QoE-driven parameters for the relay node selection and backbone maintenance. Thus, nodes decide for themselves to retransmit further the video sequences, enhancing the capacity of the system in delivering QoE-aware live videos. QORE was added to a straightforward Distance-based SRP, named DQORE. Results show the gains of DQORE in relation to SRPs, achieving video dissemination with QoE support, less routing overhead, and robustness in V2V VANETs.