Heterogeneous vehicular wireless networking: A theoretical perspective

Heterogeneous vehicular wireless networking: A theoretical perspective Optimizing vehicle-centered mobility experience requires leveraging the heterogeneous wireless connectivities (e.g., cellular, WiFi, and VANET) between vehicles and the Internet. Towards a foundation for heterogeneous vehicular wireless networking, we investigate the mathematical formulation of the problem, and we analyze the impact of bandwidth aggregation on the problem formulation as well as the computational complexity of the problem. Our analysis shows that the problem can be solved in polynomial time if bandwidth aggregation is employed, but the problem becomes NP-complete and cannot be solved optimally in general if bandwidth aggregation is not employed. Our analysis is constructive such that it suggests efficient approaches to solving the problem in an optimal manner when bandwidth aggregation is employed, and it suggests both optimal and approximate approaches to solving the problem when bandwidth aggregation is not employed. The above analytical insight serves as a guidance on choosing the system architecture and algorithms for heterogeneous vehicular wireless networking.