Smart transportation networks, featured by high mobility and intermittent connectivity, are facing critical challenges in data delivery especially when the network is sparse and with less or no support from any infrastructure, such as in disaster and military environments. Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), due to their flexible mobility, can be envisioned to enhance the connectivity of ground vehicular networks. In this paper, incorporating UAVs into vehicular networks, a novel data delivery scheme, named UAV-assisted data delivery (UADD), is proposed for smart transportation networks. We introduce a novel concept called “opportunistic virtual intersections”, at which UAVs can communicate with ground vehicles, and assist to deliver data packets. Specifically, at an opportunistic virtual intersection, UAVs may act as a relay, which can relay data packets between two vehicles as an intermediate hop, or deliver data packets in a store-carry-and-forward manner. The data forwarding rules are devised based on expected delivery delay and delivery probability of data packets. The performance evaluation demonstrates that the proposed UAV-assisted data delivery scheme can achieve a significant improvement of data delivery performance in terms of delivery delay and delivery ratio.
UAV-Aided Data Delivery Scheme Based on Opportunistic Virtual Intersections for Smart Transportation Networks