TSF: Trajectory-based statistical forwarding for infrastructure-to-vehicle data delivery in vehicular networks

This paper proposes a data forwarding scheme called Trajectory-based Statistical Forwarding (TSF), tailored for the data delivery from infrastructure nodes (e.g., Internet access points) to moving vehicles in vehicular networks. To our knowledge, this paper presents the first attempt to investigate how to effectively utilize the packet destination vehicle's trajectory for such an infrastructure-to-vehicle data delivery. This data delivery is performed through the computation of a target point based on the destination vehicle's trajectory that is an optimal rendezvous point of the packet and the destination vehicle. TSF forwards packets over multi-hop to a selected target point where the vehicle is expected to pass by. Such a target point is selected optimally to minimize the packet delivery delay while satisfying the required packet delivery probability. The optimality is achieved analytically by utilizing the packet's delivery delay distribution and the destination vehicle's travel delay distribution. Through theoretical analysis and extensive simulation, it is shown that our design provides an efficient data forwarding under a variety of vehicular traffic conditions.