Simulation Study on Collaborative Content Distribution in Delay Tolerant Vehicular Networks

Modern vehicles are equipped with more and more sophisticated computer modules, which need to periodically download files from the cloud, such as security certificates, digital maps, system firmwares, etc. Collaborative content distribution utilizes V2V communication to distribute large files across the vehicular networks. It has the potential to significantly reduce the cost of cellular-based communication such as 4G LTE. In this report, we have conducted a simulation study to verify the feasibility of a hybrid cellular and V2V collaborative content distribution network. In our simulation, a small portion of the simulated vehicles download the file directly from the cloud via cellular communication, while other vehicles receive the file via collaborative V2V communications. Our simulation results show that, with only 1% of vehicles enabled with cellular communication, it takes less than 24 hours to distribute a file to 90% of the vehicles in a metropolitan area, and around 48 to 72 hours to distribute to 99%. The results are very promising for many delay-tolerant content distribution applications in vehicular networks.