PONE-D-21-30574An Improved Multipath video data communication in Vehicular Delay Tolerant NetworkPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Almotairi,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process.

Please submit your revised manuscript by Jan 21 2022 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file.

Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript:

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We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Jian Shen

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Partly

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Partly

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2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: N/A

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3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

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4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

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5. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: In this paper, the multipath transmission with a delay-tolerant network concept based on a node disjoint algorithm is investigated, where the first path carries the video reference frame and the second one carries neighboring frames during video transmission. A communication cost function, based on link stability rate, accessible bandwidth estimation, and transmission delay, is introduced into the existing delay-tolerant network. The simulations are provided to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed scheme.

The following comments might be helpful for improving the presentations:

1) The contribution and motivation of this paper are not clear. What is the motivation to design the store-carry-forward with the consideration of multipath video data transmission? What are the advantages of estimating the video data communication cost for relay nodes? The authors are invited to give a detailed discussion on these issues.

2) The performance comparison is presented based on the simulation results. It is insufficient to show the superiority of the proposed MVDTN scheme by simulation. Some experiment results should be given to show the implementability of the designed MVDTN.

3) This manuscript looks like a technical manual rather than a scientific article. The authors should give an intensive theoretical analysis on the proposed results.

4) The readability should be improved of this paper should be improved. There are some typos throughout the paper that should be corrected.

Summing up the above comments, the manuscript can be accepted provided that the above comments are properly taken into account.

Reviewer #2: This paper studies how to transmit video efficiently without losing frames in vehicular network. The problem selection has practical significance. The language of the article is fluent,and the experiment is sufficient. But the innovation is not strong. Can you discuss what is the essential difference between and distributed storage?

Reviewer #3: In this paper, the author proposed a storage-forward method for multipath video data transmission and introduced a communication cost function into the existing delay-tolerant network (DTN).

The whole paper is finished with some problems. There is a long way to go before it can be accepted. We point out the specific problems as follows:

1. First of all, the title of this paper is “An Improved Multipath video data communication in Vehicular Delay Tolerant Network”. From the author's abstract section, it is difficult to see where the improvements proposed by the author are. In fact, the author doesn’t give the current research hot issues in the first few sentences of the abstract.

2. The author's contribution is too few and the description is unclear. It is difficult for me to understand the author's second and third contribution points as two complete ones.

3. In the related work section, the author's description is too redundant. In fact, the related work is a summary of previous work. It is commendable that the author selected several points in this part and cited a large number of literatures for analysis. However, some of the author's concluding remarks are too redundant. For example, on page 6, the author explains some problems in literature [29] in more than 10 lines which is too detailed and unnecessary.

4. The author made a lot of grammatical and formatting errors in his article. For example, there is nothing after the 'and' of the author's contribution; As on page 6, lines 151 and 154, the author quotes [?]. On Line 217 of page 9, the meaning of “Variable f represents” is unknown. The author had better check the whole paper carefully to correct grammatical errors, which appeared too many times and even affected reading.

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6. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files.

If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

Reviewer #3: No

[NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files.]

While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email PLOS at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step.

PONE-D-21-30574R1Improved multipath video data communication in Vehicular Delay Tolerant NetworkPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Almotairi,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process.

Please submit your revised manuscript by Jul 01 2022 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file.

Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript:

• A rebuttal letter that responds to each point raised by the academic editor and reviewer(s). You should upload this letter as a separate file labeled 'Response to Reviewers'.
• A marked-up copy of your manuscript that highlights changes made to the original version. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes'.
• An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Manuscript'.

If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, please include your updated statement in your cover letter. Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter.

If applicable, we recommend that you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io to enhance the reproducibility of your results. Protocols.io assigns your protocol its own identifier (DOI) so that it can be cited independently in the future. For instructions see: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols. Additionally, PLOS ONE offers an option for publishing peer-reviewed Lab Protocol articles, which describe protocols hosted on protocols.io. Read more information on sharing protocols at https://plos.org/protocols?utm_medium=editorial-email&utm_source=authorletters&utm_campaign=protocols.

We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Jian Shen

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Journal Requirements:

Please review your reference list to ensure that it is complete and correct. If you have cited papers that have been retracted, please include the rationale for doing so in the manuscript text, or remove these references and replace them with relevant current references. Any changes to the reference list should be mentioned in the rebuttal letter that accompanies your revised manuscript. If you need to cite a retracted article, indicate the article’s retracted status in the References list and also include a citation and full reference for the retraction notice.

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Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation.

Reviewer #1: (No Response)

Reviewer #3: (No Response)

Reviewer #4: (No Response)

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2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: (No Response)

Reviewer #3: Yes

Reviewer #4: Yes

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3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: (No Response)

Reviewer #3: Yes

Reviewer #4: (No Response)

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4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: (No Response)

Reviewer #3: Yes

Reviewer #4: (No Response)

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5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: (No Response)

Reviewer #3: Yes

Reviewer #4: Yes

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6. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: The paper has been improved. All the previous suggestions have been well considered and thoroughly implemented in this revised paper. Hence, this paper could be accepted for publication now.

Reviewer #3: After the revision of the original version, the following problems still exist in this paper:

1.This paper involves many algorithms, but the part of the derivation is too concise. I think it is necessary to explain the algorithms properly, which can help readers better understand them. It is suggested to give detailed and clear explanation.

2.There are some wrong fonts in the paper. For example, on page 10, line 257, "HM" should be italicized. Please check the whole paper and correct similar mistakes carefully.

3.The format of the references is not uniform in the paper. For example, in references 19 and 32, "IEEE" is lowercase while it is uppercase in other references. The authors should modify the format of references carefully.

After the revision of the original version, the following problems still exist in this paper:

1.This paper involves many algorithms, but the part of the derivation is too concise. I think it is necessary to explain the algorithms properly, which can help readers better understand them. It is suggested to give detailed and clear explanation.

2.There are some wrong fonts in the paper. For example, on page 10, line 257, "HM" should be italicized. Please check the whole paper and correct similar mistakes carefully.

3.The format of the references is not uniform in the paper. For example, in references 19 and 32, "IEEE" is lowercase while it is uppercase in other references. The authors should modify the format of references carefully.

Reviewer #4: The authors have revised the manuscript. The overall structure of the paper is clear. The simulation results show that the proposed scheme is superior to the baseline approaches. To make this paper accepted, I think relevant content still need to be improved, which is shown below.

1. This paper involves the derivation of many formulas, but some derivations are too brief, such as page 9. It is suggested to add intermediate steps appropriately.

2. In the last part of the figure, it's best to remove the outer border of the picture to make the picture cleaner.

3. The format of the references is not uniform in the paper. The authors should modify the format of references carefully.

4. There are some punctuation mistakes. For example, when introducing contribution points on page 3, the first point ends with a comma and the other two points end with a full stop, hoping that the author can correct similar mistakes.

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7. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files.

If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.

Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy.

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #3: No

Reviewer #4: No

[NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files.]

While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email PLOS at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step.

An improved multipath video data communication in a vehicular delay-tolerant network

PONE-D-21-30574R2

Dear Dr. Almotairi,

We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements.

Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication.

An invoice for payment will follow shortly after the formal acceptance. To ensure an efficient process, please log into Editorial Manager at http://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/, click the 'Update My Information' link at the top of the page, and double check that your user information is up-to-date. If you have any billing related questions, please contact our Author Billing department directly at authorbilling@plos.org.

If your institution or institutions have a press office, please notify them about your upcoming paper to help maximize its impact. If they’ll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team as soon as possible -- no later than 48 hours after receiving the formal acceptance. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information, please contact onepress@plos.org.

Kind regards,

Anand Nayyar, Ph.D.

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

The Revised Paper stands Accepted with no further revisions.

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation.

Reviewer #1: All comments have been addressed

Reviewer #3: (No Response)

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2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #3: (No Response)

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3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #3: (No Response)

**********

4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #3: (No Response)

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5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #3: (No Response)

**********

6. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: I have no further comments. My previous comments and suggestions have been addressed in last version. This paper can be accepted for publication now.

Reviewer #3: I think the paper has been revised well. This paper is accpectable for this journal. So, I suggest to accpect the paper.

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7. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files.

If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.

Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy.

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #3: No

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