A Software-Defined Networking Roadside Unit Cloud Resource Management Framework for Vehicle Ad Hoc Networks

Abstract

Roadside unit (RSU) cloud and its vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) connectivity can enable various security, entertainment, and shared mobility applications for vehicles in intelligent transportation systems (ITS) through wireless communications. In this article, the deep programmability of software-defined networking (SDN) is employed to dynamically reconfigure network hosting services and their data forwarding information for effectively meeting the basic shared mobility applications’ needs in vehicle ad hoc networks (VANETs). Multipath is also enabled to forward data flow for balancing network links utilization rate and SDN is thus utilized to achieve the minimum cloud delay with the least number of hosts, which can be summarized as a mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) problem. The joint optimization (JO) algorithm is proposed and in contrast to the two single-objective algorithms which are the delay optimization (DO) algorithm and host optimization (HO) algorithm, respectively. Results show that, for the single-threading instance, the JO and DO algorithms are the same in essence. For the multithreading instance, the JO algorithm generally outperforms the two single-objective optimization algorithms, respectively, under given demands. Furthermore, results also demonstrate that the services should be deployed globally in a distributed manner rather than in the centralized manner for achieving the minimized cloud delay in designing an RSU cloud.