LISIC: A Link Stability-Based Protocol for Vehicular Information-Centric Networks

Efficient content distribution is a critical challenge in vehicular networks (VANETs). This is due to the characteristics of vehicular networks, such as high mobility, dynamic topologies, short-lived links and intermittent connectivity between vehicles. Recently, information-centric networking (ICN) has been proposed to VANET scenarios for improving content delivery of infotainmentapplications. However, ICN in VANETs suffers from the Interest transmission broadcast problem, which results in a waste of resources and diminishes the performance of VANETs' applications. In this paper, we propose the link stability-based Interest forwarding for content request (LISIC) protocol, in order to tackle the Interest broadcast storm problem during a content search in information-centric VANETs. The proposed protocol controls Interesttransmission by prioritizing neighboring vehicles with more stable links with the current sender. Simulation results show that the proposed protocol improves the content delivery rate by 40% while decreases the Interest packet transmissions by 26%, in scenario of a low number of content producers in the network.