Network coding for efficient broadband data delivery in infrastructure-based vehicular networks with OpenFlow

This paper proposes a system architecture for supporting efficient broadband data delivery in infrastructure based vehicular networks. The proposed approach addresses two major challenges for high throughput data transport from Internet to moving vehicles over infrastructure wireless networks such as today's 4G technologies: 1) difficulty in maintaining stable throughput over high latency wide area paths in core networks; 2) difficulty in maintaining continuous data download across road-side units (RSUs) in the edge. Specifically, the system multicasts network-encoded packets in the core network (wired Internet infrastructure) to multiple selected RSUs, while the RSUs collaborate in disseminating and scheduling delivery of the encoded packets to vehicles. Realizing the overall system requires network coding and multipath forwarding capabilities in the core network, and network decoding support in the vehicles. For network coding to be efficient, however, dynamic control of the forwarding paths of the network coded packets are essential. This paper presents the proposed system architecture, its key components, and how they can be experimentally studied over National Science Foundation's Global Environment for Network Innovations (GENI) testbed. Experiments on ProtoGENI testbed show the feasibility and advantages of network coding in core networks.