Addressing the Effects of Low Vehicle Density in Highly Mobile Vehicular Named-Data Networks

In this work, we address the negative effects of network partitions, caused by low vehicle densities, on the performance of Vehicular Named-Data Networking (VNDN) applications. We target scenarios with high mobility and propose two different solutions. For cases with infrastructure support, we present the idea of VNDN agent delegation. For this approach, we develop a VNDN communication mechanism for Road Side Units (RSUs), we deploy it in RSUs along roads, and delegate content retrieval to these VNDN enabled RSUs. For cases with lack of infrastructure support we develop a novel store carry forward mechanism for VNDN message retransmissions by vehicles in the case of network partitions occurrence. Simulation results show that both solutions are efficient and scalable. Besides, our solutions also prevent the well-known problems of broadcast storms and message redundancy and address the effects of reverse path partitioning.