Cooperative data dissemination via space-time network coding in vehicular networks

In this paper, we for the first time consider the space-time network coding (STNC) to propose a novel cooperative data dissemination strategy in the time-division multiple access (TDMA) manner for the vehicle network, to overcome the shortcomings of the traditional network coding (NC) techniques with carrier sense multiple access/collision avoidance (CSMA/CA) protocol, i.e, high signal detection complexity and channel collision problem. An optimal relay selection strategy in the procedure of cooperative data dissemination is proposed to maximize the average system capacity for the data dissemination. In a addition, a suboptimal relay selection strategy is put forward to reduce the computation complexity and thus makes the developed data dissemination strategy more practical. Compared with the non-cooperative data dissemination, the proposed cooperative data dissemination via STNC has better performance in terms of the average system capacity, the average user equipment (UE) capacity, and the average data dissemination delay.