Vehicular Network-Aware Route Selection Considering Communication Requirements of Users for ITS

Increasing demands of mobile users on communication and new types of devices, such as sensors, machines, and vehicles, impose high load on cellular networks. Since requirements are expected to rise in a near future, new ways for cellular network offloading are needed. A promising solution for vehicles and vehicular users is to offload data to vehicular networks. To maximize offloading of the cellular networks, the vehicles can be navigated through areas characterized with more available communication capacity. Hence, we propose a novel scalable traveling route selection algorithm determining the route according to a traveling time and available throughput of both cellular and vehicular networks. While the maximum tolerated traveling time is defined by the vehicular users, an estimation of available throughput is based on a vehicular movement prediction. The proposed route selection algorithm is able to offload cellular network by up to 17% and time spent without required quality of connection can be reduced by 65%. At the same time, the traveling time is prolonged only negligibly in comparison with state-of-the-art algorithms.