Collaborative data dissemination in cognitive VANETs with sensing-throughput tradeoff

Vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) have recently received considerable attentions for both safety and commercial applications. In this paper, we address popular content distribution (PCD) in VANETs, in which a popular file is downloaded by a group of on-board units (OBUs) passing by a roadside unit (RSU). Due to high speeds and channel fadings, the OBUs may not finish downloading the entire file from the RSU, but only possess several content pieces. In this paper, we propose a cooperative approach using coalitional graph game to establish a peer-to-peer (P2P) network among the OBUs, in which content pieces are exchanged to complete the file downloading process. Further, we adopt cognitive radio (CR) technique for implementing vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) transmissions. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm enjoys a better performance in various conditions, compared to the non-cooperative approach, where OBUs randomly response to content requests from other OBUs.