Performance analysis of real-time multimedia transmission in 802.11p based multihop hybrid vehicular networks

Real-time multimedia communications over vehicular ad-hoc networks (VANET) will play an extremely significant role in the next generation intelligent transport systems. In recent years, there has been an upsurge of interest in the quality-oriented adaptive multimedia delivery, including over VANET. In this paper, a hybrid IEEE 802.11p-based multihop network communication solution is presented, which makes use of both in frastructure and ad-hoc modes in order to deliver quality-oriented real-time multimedia content to high-speed vehicles. Simulation-based testing shows how multimedia delivery to vehicles when using the multihop hybrid mechanism achieves significantly higher throughput in comparison to the case when the in frastructure mode is employed and the vehicles communicate directly with the base station. This result is obtained while the average delay and packet loss in the two cases are similar.