Quality of Service of Video Streaming in Vehicular Adhoc Networks: Performance Analysis

Vehicular ad hoc network (VANET) is an emerging network technology with the goal of providing public safety, traffic coordination and infotainment for the comfort of passengers in moving vehicles. However, it faces the challenge of not providing the expected quality of service (QoS) when streaming videos online. This challenge emanate from the variable topology infrastructure caused by intrinsic high mobility nodes and dynamic environments of VANETs. A better QoS in video applications can possibly be achieved if suitable routing protocols (RPs) is/are used. Hence, this paper compared and analyzed four existing routing protocols in VANETs. The objective was to identify an efficient RPs that can deliver better QoS for video streaming applications with respect to number of nodes used. A simulation was conducted using OPNET 14.5 Modeler and results analyzed with respect to throughput, delay and routing traffic received. Results shows that OLSR performance is better when few nodes are used and AODV shows better service when many nodes are used, thereby guaranteeing the user high quality of video when streaming online. Based on the results, it would be recommended that OLSR and AODV be used as hybrid protocol to provide better QoS for video streaming in VANETs.