A vehicular network architecture for data collection: application to an itinerary planning service in smart cities

Greenhouse gases emission, to which vehicles are nowadays highly contributing, is among the major concerns of green associations and governments. Several efforts are granted by all stakeholders to remedy to its harmful effects. This paper proposes an architecture allowing to gather useful information from a fleet of vehicles that can be used to decrease pollution problems and offer different services for smart cities. Among the given services, itinerary planning is considered to be the most important due to its economic and natural impact. Therefore, we propose and develop, as a proof of concept, a new itinerary planning service to efficiently calculate best itineraries in term of fuel consumption based on the collected information. We focus on information that help to enhance the accuracy and precision of vehicle´s fuel consumption calculation along a trip, specifically: topological information such as road´s elevation, trip information, traffic and weather conditions, vehicle´s status and available service stations along routes.