Control Plane Optimization in Software-Defined Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks

The vehicle ad hoc network (VANET) is an emerging network technology that is expected to be cost-effective and adaptable, making it ideal to provide network connection service to drivers and passengers on today's roads. In the next generation of VANETs with fifth-generation (5G) networks, software-defined networking (SDN) technology will play a very important role in network management. However, for infotainment applications, high latency in VANET communication imposes a great challenge for network management, whereas direct communication through the cellular networks brings high cost. In this paper, we present an optimizing strategy to balance the latency requirement and the cost on cellular networks, in which we encourage vehicles to send the SDN control requests through the cellular networks by rebating network bandwidth. Furthermore, we model the interaction of the controller and vehicles as a two-stage Stackelberg game and analyze the game equilibrium. From the experimental results, the optimal rebating strategy provides smaller latency than other control plane structures.