The Role of Vehicular Ad hoc Networks in Future Heterogeneous Networks

Scientific Contributions: Recent developments in the automotive industry point to a new emerging domain of vehicular wireless networks, which include not only vehicle-to-vehicle communications but also vehicle-to-infrastructure communications. Vehicular networks are envisioned to be a critical component of future large-scale, heterogeneous Internet architecture which not only covers traditional cyberspace but also links the physical worlds to cyberspace. In the past few years, several US industry initiatives supported by US Department of Transportation have focused on industry developments and commercialization of safety applications using off-the-shelf technical approaches. At the same time, there is also considerable scope for the development of more sophisticated information-rich applications which can provide more benefit to end users. However, it is increasingly clear that enabling a rich set of vehicular applications requires that peer-to-peer Vehicular Ad hoc Network (VANET) technology be developed beyond the state-of-the-art.