MERVS: A Novel Multichannel Error Recovery Video Streaming Protocol for Vehicle Ad Hoc Networks

Accompanying the increasing interest in vehicle ad hoc networks (VANETs), there is a request for high-quality and real-time video streaming on a VANET, for safety and infotainment applications. Video streaming on a VANET faces extra issues, in comparison with the video streaming on a mobile ad hoc network (MANET), such as the highly dynamic topology. However, there are also benefits to VANETs, such as large buffer and battery capacity, predictable motion of vehicles, and powerful central and graphic processing units (CPU and GPU, respectively). However, the high packet loss ratio of a VANET is a critical issue for high-quality video streaming. In this paper, we propose an error recovery process for high-quality and real-time video streaming in a VANET, which is call multichannel error recovery video streaming (MERVS). MERVS transmits the video through two different channels: a reliable channel and an unreliable channel. Because of the importance of the intraframes (I-frames) in terms of video quality, I-frames will be transmitted through the reliable channel. The interframes will be transmitted through the unreliable channel because of the limited resource of the reliable channel. The priority queue, quick start, and scalable reliable channel (SRC) techniques are also integrated to improve the delay of MERVS. Based on the conducted simulation results, MERVS can provide higher quality video streaming compared with forward error correction (FEC) with similar time delay compared with the real-time transport protocol/user datagram protocol (RTP/UDP) in a VANET.