Robust video communication over an urban VANET

  • Authors:

  • N. Qadri;M. Altaf;M. Fleury;M. Ghanbari

  • Affiliations:

  • School of Computer Science and Electronic Engineering, University of Essex, Wivenhoe Park, Colchester, CO4 3SQ, UK;School of Computer Science and Electronic Engineering, University of Essex, Wivenhoe Park, Colchester, CO4 3SQ, UK;(Correspd. Tel.: +44 1206 872817/ Fax: +44 1206 872900/ E-mail: fleum@essex.ac.uk) School of Computer Science and Electronic Engineering, University of Essex, Wivenhoe Park, Colchester, CO4 3SQ, U ...;School of Computer Science and Electronic Engineering, University of Essex, Wivenhoe Park, Colchester, CO4 3SQ, UK

  • Venue:
  • Mobile Information Systems
  • Year:
  • 2010

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Abstract

Video communication within a Vehicular Ad Hoc Network (VANET) has the potential to be of considerable benefit in an urban emergency, as it allows emergency vehicles approaching the scene to better understand the nature of the emergency. However, the lack of centralized routing and network resource management within a VANET is an impediment to video streaming. To overcome these problems the paper pioneers source-coding techniques for VANET video streaming. The paper firstly investigates two practical multiple-path schemes, Video Redundancy Coding (VRC) and the H.264/AVC codec's redundant frames. The VRC scheme is reinforced by gradual decoder refresh to improve the delivered video quality. Evaluation shows that multiple-path 'redundant frames' achieves acceptable video quality at some destinations, whereas VRC is insufficient. The paper also demonstrates a third source coding scheme, single-path streaming with Flexible Macroblock Ordering, which is also capable of delivery of reasonable quality video. Therefore, video communication between vehicles is indeed shown to be feasible in an urban emergency if the suitable source coding techniques are selected.