Neighboring vehicle-assisted fast handoff for vehicular fog communications

With the fast development of vehicular technology and the emergence of mobile applications, it has become urgent to connect moving vehicles to Internet due to the ever-growing user demands. As an emerging paradigm of Internet of vehicles (IoV), vehicular fog communication (VFC) can not only efficiently enable drivers to access traditional Internet multimedia services, but also possible to enjoy new Internet applications dedicated to intelligent transportations. However, in VFC, travelling vehicles move with a high velocity and change their points of attachment frequently, which results in frequent network handoffs and even connection interruptions. In order to provide a satisfactory user experience, and enable vehicles to keep always-on-line connections when they are moving along urban roads, this paper proposes a cross-layer and neighboring vehicle-aided fast handoff (CVFH) scheme. A vehicle in CVFH utilizes the neighboring vehicle’s assistance to find a qualified vehicle to determine the target AP, and get related information before the vehicle moves into the coverage of the target AP. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme can improve the handoff performance in terms of handoff delay and throughput.