NGVN: A framework for Next Generation Vehicular Networks

Vehicular communications is an important research area. Unfortunately, the proposed Vehicular Ad-Hoc Networks (VANET) solutions are either extremely complex, making them impractical for implementation, or they focus on a limited service scenario only. In this paper, we are defining a new, “clean-slate” framework for Next Generation Vehicular Networks (NGVN), which is able to cope with multiple service scenarios. The layered structure of the framework is relatively simple and is able to accommodate many of the existing VANET concepts. It is based on the context-awareness paradigm which is implemented in all framework layers and it focuses on enabling disruption-tolerant networking to improve connection reliability and content dissemination. The contexts are exchanged in a cross-layer fashion, allowing the system to adapt its behavior in order to increase the overall performance. This paper presents the fundamental concepts of the proposed framework.