Simulation Results and a Proof-of-Concept Implementation of the FleetNet Position-Based Router: Extended Abstract

The FleetNet project4 [1,2,3] develops a platform for inter-vehicle communications based on ad hoc networking principles. With an ad hoc network established by moving vehicles, a realm of applications – ranging from exchange of emergency warnings or sensor data to unicast communication between passengers of different vehicles and to integration of the vehicular ad hoc network with the Internet through static or mobile FleetNet gateways – could be enabled in a low-latency, robust and low-cost fashion. Vehicular ad hoc networks show a high level of mobility and, correspondingly, a high degree of dynamics with respect to topological changes. Therefore, multi-hop communication represents a serious challenge. Since in a vehicular ad hoc network communication end-points might be addressed by specifying a geographic region (geocast) in addition to standard IP addressing, positional information has to be used in any case for forwarding packets. GPS (and in the future Galileo) receivers will soon become a standard piece of equipment in vehicles and can be used to support routing tasks. In previous publications we have shown on the basis of simulations that routing methods that make use of geographic information can outperform other routing approaches in the case of vehicular ad hoc networks. Example results will be given in Section 2. As a ‘proof-of-concept’as well as to compare simulation results with reality, we currently have set up a real-world test network consisting of 6 Smart cars equipped with GPS receivers, IEEE 802.11b wireless LAN NICs, and our FleetNet router. In this extended abstract we outline the testbed architecture of this ‘FleetNet Demonstrator’ (FND) on both, hardware and software side and some first insights and experiences