Optimized Content Delivery in Vehicular Networks

Abstract

Context: Vehicles are essential components of vehicular networks: they function as mobile nodes that exchange and disseminate vital information including emergency warnings, safety alerts, and updates on passenger enjoyment. As a result, the network experiences high data flow and a notable rise in data traffic. ICN architectures have been established in contrast to standard host-centric IP networks, which find it difficult to suit the dynamic needs of vehicular networks. ICN caching makes it possible to store content on the network, decreases content latency, and improves content accessibility. Objective: This work aims to optimize content delivery in vehicular networks using ICN networks with efficient caching decisions. Method: An efficient SH-based (Stretch and Hop) caching strategy is proposed to select the cache node with more interfaces in a delivery path. The interest and data packets are modified to identify the bridge node by adding H and stretch fields in the packets. Further, a novel cache replacement policy called PRPI (Popularity-Recency-Probability-Interfaces) eviction policy is proposed to remove outdated data from the cache node when storage is full. PRPI policy considers the content’s popularity, recency score, probabilistic factor, and incoming interface score to calculate eviction value. The content with the least eviction value is selected to remove from the cache. Result: The proposed work is evaluated using simulation, and the results show better efficiency in terms of cache hit ratio, content retrieval delay, and stretch ratio. Conclusion: Using ICN caching in vehicular networks increases content availability in a network. The proposed work uses a high interface node to cache the content and removes the outdated content by considering multiple factors. This method leads to storing the fresh content at a more connected node, which can satisfy more requests.