Cloud computing provides a way to avail hardware and software to provide services over the networks to users, whereas in mobile cloud computing, mobile devices are a part of cloud users and service providers. Vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) are developed with the help of mobile ad hoc networks (MANET) with the difference that the data are exchanged among mobile vehicles to enhance the road safety and traffic efficiency. VANETs safety applications includes traffic signal violation, curve speed warning, emergency brake lights, pre-crash sensing, collision warning, left turn assist, lane change warning, and stop sign assist. But due to the requirement of smaller size, one of the significant challenges of the vehicular network is the limited resource with respect to memory, computation power, and bandwidth. It leads to slow data processing capability. However, the demanding requirement of emerging application is complex computation with high storage capacity. This necessity can be fulfilled by sharing the available resource among all the vehicles which are in near proximity. It can be achieved by integrating the vehicular network with cloud computing which is called as vehicular cloud computing (VCC). VCC is a new technological shift that can take the advantages of cloud computing to afford the services to drivers of VANET. But VCC is still in early stage and due to its unique features and applications it has become a significant emerging research area which needs to be explored further.
TopIntroduction
Communication and information technology is the source of power for most important innovations in the society, in specific automotive industry. In the last two decades, wireless communications have changed our lifestyle by allowing the exchange of information from anywhere at any time. The use of this wireless communication systems in vehicles is expected to be a significant resource to improve vehicles and to create a safer infrastructure for road transport which is confirmed by a number of different projects initiated towards vehicular networks by national and international organization.
From the last two decades, the industrialists and academicians were focusing their research towards road safety and traffic management. The first outlook of researchers was that radio-equipped vehicles could increase the awareness of road condition which is then expanded with internet and its services. A classic car or truck today is expected to have at least some of the devices like an on-board computer, a GPS device, a radio transceiver, a short-range rear collision radar device, a camera, a variety of sophisticated sensing devices and Event Data Recorder (EDR). EDR collects transactional data from most of the vehicle subassemblies and able to store retrievable data (Mohamed, Stephan, & Mohamed, 2010). In 2006 the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) declared its intent to standardize the various EDR devices provided by car and truck manufacturers.
As technology is moving closer and closer to packing sophisticated resources in individual vehicles, manufacturers are focusing their attention to provide the transport infrastructure which will ensure journey to be safe and enjoyable. It is assured by providing information about traffic congestion, accidents, hazardous road conditions, weather conditions, and the location of facilities (e.g., gas stations and restaurants) (Rodolfo, 2016). In this context efficiency is obtained by increasing the capacity of the road network, reducing pollution and congestion, making travel time more predictable, reducing operating costs for vehicles, providing more efficient logistics management, improving management and control of road networks, and increasing efficiency of public transport systems (Rodolfo, 2016). Journey becomes more enjoyable by providing access to the Internet, with its tourist information/advertising, the ability to download files, and chat. These applications together known as an intelligent transport system (ITS), (Salim, 2012) which aims to apply intelligent technologies of information and communication to provide innovative services of traffic management and transport to improve efficiency, safety and the fun. ITS helps to avoid traffic congestions and accidents which are increased with the population growth and caused several undesirable effects like long travel time, air pollution, and fuel consumption. Many efforts have been devoted by ITS organizations in order to find ubiquitous solutions by developing vehicular networking and traffic communications. But, the communication, storage and computing resources available in the vehicles are not utilized efficiently. These underutilized resources of vehicles on the road can be pooled and rented to customers with the help of cloud known as Vehicular Clouds which are technologically feasible and will provide benefits of societal and technological impacts. The goal of this chapter is to facilitate readers to better understand the fundamental of emerging paradigm of vehicular cloud computing mechanisms to lead their research activities.
The rest of this chapter is organized as follows: First chapter introduces the background of vehicular cloud computing such as VANET, cloud computing, and Mobile cloud computing. Then it gives about the overview of VCC and its working. Then VCC architecture, framework and its design principles are explained. Specifically in detail about the integration of the Mobile cloud computing with VANET, cloud based middle ware for VANET, and cloud-assisted information dissemination system in VANET. The sensing platforms for VCC are discussed. Then the potential applications scenarios and types of applications are also discussed. At last, this chapter ends with conclusion.