Using RSUs as delegates for pervasive access to services in vehicle ad hoc networks

Abstract

Vehicular ad hoc networks, also known as VANETs, enable vehicles which are not necessarily within the same radio transmission range to communicate with each other. In addition to allowing direct communication between vehicles, VANETs also enable vehicles to connect to Roadside Units (RSUs) which are inexpensive infrastructure that have the capability of communicating with each others and with passing by vehicles. RSUs have so far been used for various purposes such as information disseminators, traffic directories, security providers, and service directories that store information about service providers. In this paper, we propose a system that uses RSUs as delegates of users in a VANET to acquire services from service providers without the users directly connecting to them. Since some of these services may require user authentication with the corresponding service providers, the system implements a method for allowing RSUs to use the user's credentials to get the requested services without jeopardizing the user's privacy. We evaluated the performance of the proposed system using the ns2 simulation software and demonstrated through comparing the results to those of an existing system the feasibility and efficiency of the new system in terms of query delay and traffic generation.

SCORE: Data Scheduling at roadside units in vehicle ad hoc networks

“…The handover operation has been fully explained in [1]. We do not include its details here since it is not relevant to the scheduling mechanism that we propose in this paper.…”

“…In this section, we will provide a brief overview of the basic operations of ROADS. For complete details, the reader can refer to [1].…”

“…In ROADS [1], users register with the RSU network online (via Internet). When registering, the user specifies his frequent interests (such as web sites, email, news, etc…) so that the RSUs will prepare his interests ahead of time before he connects to the VANET.RSUs cache several types of information that are ready to be delivered to users, and can also obtain on-demand users' data from service and data providers.…”

“…Also, each RSU distinguishes between the interests of different users in order not to waste its resources. Our proposed approach builds on top of the data acquisition mechanism we proposed in [1]. We call the approach proposed in this paper SCheduling of users cOnnections at RoadsidE units (SCORE).…”

“…These applications span many fields, from office-on-wheels to entertainment, mobile Internet games, mobile shopping, downloading files, reading e-mail while on the move, chatting within social networks, etc…In order to make these services available, there is a need for an efficient data acquisition protocol. In [1], we proposed a novel approach for satisfying various users' requests. We called our approach Roadside units as Delegates to access Services (ROADS).…”