Evaluation of the Effect of Variations in Vehicle Velocity and Channel Bandwidth on an Image-Streaming System in Vehicular Networks

In this paper, we propose a solution for implementing a real-time image-streaming system for vehicle networks. Our proposed system organizes each vehicle as a local Internet of Things network. In each network, nodes are connected to cameras to capture images of the surrounding environment of the road. Then, the captured data are published to a streaming server via a 4G internet connection. In order to adapt to the change in bandwidth channel and vehicle speed, we propose algorithms to control the quality of image capture and the number of images taken. Our algorithms are based on a prediction method of the available bandwidth of the channel to control the rate of sending data from each local node in subsequent transmissions. Also in this paper, we present the relationships between channel bandwidth, vehicle velocity, and image quality. The experimental results and our simulation show that the proposed system significantly reduces end-to-end delay when the number of nodes increases. This offers a capability for high-quality image-streaming applications over vehicle networks. The system is also successfully implemented in a real-world application, and the results show that the collected images are of high quality.