Floating Car Data Technology

The limiting conditions of traffic in cities, together with the complex and dynamic traffic flows, require an efficient and systematic management and information provision for the traffic participants, with the goal to achieve better utilisation of traffic resources and preserve sustainable mobility. In that context, it is important to identify the traffic flow location features, which requires data and information. This paper presents the application of mobile vehicles for the collection of real time traffic flow data. Such data have become an important source of traffic data, since they can be collected in a simple and cost-efficient way, enabling higher coverage than the conventional approaches, despite the reliability issues. The term referring to that type of data collection, commonly used in scientific and professional literature is FCD (Floating Car Data) and “Probe vehicle”. The efficiency presentation of applying this extensive data source for retrieving necessary parameters and information related to the achievement of sustainable mobility is the final objective of this paper. A description of modern technologies that serve as a basis for probe vehicle data collection has been provided: a geographical information system (GIS), global navigation satellite system (GNSS) and related wireless communication. Within the key technologies review, the development possibilities of data collection by mobile sensors have also been presented

Clustering and 5G-enabled smart cities: a survey of clustering schemes in VANETs

This chapter highlights the importance of Vehicular Ad-hoc Networks (VANETs) in the context of the 5Genabled smarter cities and roads, a topic that attracts significant interest. In order for VANETs and its associated applications to become a reality, a very promising avenue is to bring together multiple wireless technologies in the architectural design. 5G is envisioned to have a heterogeneous network architecture. Clustering is employed in designing optimal VANET architectures that successfully use different technologies, therefore clustering has the potential to play an important role in the 5G-VANET enabled solutions. This chapter presents a survey of clustering approaches in the VANET research area. The survey provides a general classification of the clustering algorithms, presents some of the most advanced and latest algorithms in VANETs, and it is among the fewest works in the literature that reviews the performance assessment of clustering algorithms

Heterogeneous wireless networks for smart cities

In the near future, a world of smart cities is envisioned in which many devices equipped with sensors and communication interfaces can be used to collect and share data in order to derive maps or infer information on some parameter of interest. Wireless technologies are enabling this smart city paradigms, where many items are networked for the growth of society. This scenario opens new challenges to wireless network designers, with new performance metrics, coverage and privacy needs, as well as the need for a tighter integration of different networks. This is the fundamental concept of Heterogeneous Networks. Enclosing humans in the loop, through crowdsensing techniques, will dramatically increase the amount of data available for the mapping process, with obvious benefits in terms of the resulting accuracy. On the other hand, the huge amount of data generated represents also a challenge that, along with the irregular, uncontrollable, spatial distribution of measurements represent serious challenges to be addressed. Another important aspect of smart cities scenarios is represented by vehicular networks. Several technologies have been proposed to address such application. Among the others, an interesting solution is provided by Visible Light Communications (VLC). Based on the use of the light emission diodes (LEDs) that are already available on the majority of vehicles, VLC would enable short range communication in large, unlicensed, and uncongested bands with limited costs. In the framework of smart cities scenarios, my research activity aimed at formulating and solving some of the issues arising from the envisioned challenging services, with both analytical and simulation-based approaches