Multicast/broadcast service in integrated VANET-cellular heterogeneous wireless networks

In recent years, there is a significant trend for VANET to provide not only traditional services like warning information exchanging for road safety and car collision avoidance but also various multimedia applications such as mobile TV which may require broadband access to core network or Internet. On the other hand, service provision technologies with point-to-multipoint transmission mode which could better utilize the limited wireless resource have been well discussed and standardized, such as MBMS in 3GPP and BCMCS in 3GPP2. In this paper, we propose an effective solution aimed to enable multicast/broadcast service provision in integrated VANET-cellular heterogeneous wireless networks based on a two-phase cooperative transmission strategy. Through analysis and simulation, our proposal combines advantages of these two heterogeneous networks and the nature of multicast/broadcast technology.