A Software-Oriented Architecture for Next Generation Vehicular Networks

Intelligent Transportation Systems enable a whole new set of vehicular applications designed to improve and secure the driving experience. Given the variety of potential services to be provided, as well as the complexity and challenges related to the highly dynamic vehicular environment, many research efforts have been focused in this area. Unfortunately, the proposed solutions for Vehicular Ad-Hoc Network (VANET) so far, target the specific scenarios or functions of the system only. Without a unified vision, they are not mutually compatible and cannot be integrated into a practical implementation. In this paper, we define a software-oriented node architecture for Next Generation Vehicular Networks (NGVN). The architecture is open and can accommodate many of the existing proposals, built on concepts like disruption-tolerant connectivity, context-awareness and cross-layer optimizations. The paper identifies some key modeling issues and proposes a new modular design for the system implementation.