Adaptive Solutions in Multihop Communication Protocols for Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks

Vehicular Networks Applications And Different Classifications

A major requirement in order to propose good adaptive solutions is first to know the environment in which the adaptation will occur. In the case of multihop communication protocols for VANETs, it is imperative to have a general view of all the applications that will use the protocol in the upper layer, know their characteristics and synthesize their communications needs. That is why as a first step, this section illustrates the vehicular applications envisioned by the research community.

The original motivation behind vehicular communications was to improve safety on the roads, as many lives have been lost and much more injuries have been incurred due to car crashes. A driver seeing the brake lights on the car in front of her has only a few seconds to react. Moreover, even if she responded in time, cars behind her could also crash since they were not warned of what was happening in front of them. This has motivated one of the first applications for vehicular communications, namely cooperative collision warning, which relies on vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communication¹. From here on, other safety applications emerged more recently, such as applications that aim at providing drivers with real-time information about traffic conditions.

To better contrast the differences and similarities between the applications envisioned in this kind of networks, instead of listing all these applications specifically one by one, a better approach is to illustrate how they are classified in the literature and how this classification is evolving with the introduction of more potential applications.