CVCG: Cooperative V2V-Aided Transmission Scheme Based on Coalitional Game for Popular Content Distribution in Vehicular Ad-Hoc Networks

As one of the key services for non-safety applications in Vehicular Ad-hoc Networks (VANETs), the Popular Content Distribution (PCD) has become a hot issue in recent years. In popular content distribution, the On-Board Units (OBUs) passing the Area of Interest (AoI) receive popular content broadcast by the RoadSide Units (RSUs). However, due to the high speed of OBUs, limited bandwidth, and unstable wireless connections, only a portion of the popular content can be received by OBUs. To address this issue, in this paper, a cooperative V2V-aided transmission scheme based on a coalitional game (CVCG) is proposed. The scheme allows the OBUs to cooperate with their neighbors to provide the missing popular content. In addition, a coalition graph game algorithm is designed for optimizing the cooperative behaviors among OBUs. The performance of our CVCG scheme is evaluated by different metrics compared to other three content distribution schemes. The numerical results show that the proposed CVCG scheme could outperform the three schemes in terms of the number of iterations for 99 percent finished PCD, the average content completion percentage, and the number of completed OBUs.