Evaluating Link Lifetime Prediction to Support Computational Offloading Decision in VANETs

Abstract

In urban mobility, Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks (VANETs) provide a variety of intelligent applications. By enhancing automobile traffic management, these technologies enable advancements in safety and help decrease the frequency of accidents. The transportation system can now follow the development and growth of cities without sacrificing the quality and organisation of its services thanks to safety apps that include collision alerts, real-time traffic information, and safe driving applications, among others. Applications can occasionally demand a lot of computing power, making their processing impractical for cars with limited onboard processing capacity. Offloading of computation is encouraged by such a restriction. However, because vehicle mobility operations are dynamic, communication times (also known as link lifetimes) between nodes are frequently short. VANET applications and processes are impacted by such communication delays (e.g., the offloading decision when using the Computational Offloading technique). Making an accurate prediction of the link lifespan between vehicles is therefore challenging. The effectiveness of the communication time estimation is currently constrained by the link lifespan prediction methods used in the computational offloading process. This work investigates five machine learning (ML) algorithms to predict the link lifetime between nodes in VANETs in different scenarios. We propose the procedures required to carry out the link lifetime prediction method using existing ML techniques. The tactic creates datasets with the features the models need to learn and be trained. The SVR and XGBoost algorithms that were selected as part of the assessment process were trained. To make the prediction using the trained models, we modified the lifespan prediction function from an offloading approach. To determine the viability of applying link lifespan predictions from the models trained in the road and urban scenarios, we conducted a performance study. The findings indicate that compared to the conventional prediction strategy described in the literature, the suggested link lifetime prediction via regression approaches decreases prediction error rates. An offloading method from the literature is extended by the selected SVR. The task loss and recovery rates might be significantly reduced using the SVR. XGBoost outperformed its ML competitors in task recovery or drop rate by 70% to 80% in an assessed hypothesis compared to an offloading choice technique in the literature. With greater offloading rates from an application on the VANET, this effort is intended to give better efficiency in estimating this data using machine learning in various vehicular settings.