A Taxonomy for Congestion Control Algorithms in Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks

One of the main criteria in Vehicular Ad hoc Networks (VANETs) that has attracted the researchers' consideration is congestion control. Accordingly, many algorithms have been proposed to alleviate the congestion problem, although it is hard to find an appropriate algorithm for applications and safety messages among them. Safety messages encompass beacons and event-driven messages. Delay and reliability are essential requirements for event-driven messages. In crowded networks where beacon messages are broadcasted at a high number of frequencies by many vehicles, the Control Channel (CCH), which used for beacons sending, will be easily congested. On the other hand, to guarantee the reliability and timely delivery of event-driven messages, having a congestion free control channel is a necessity. Thus, consideration of this study is given to find a solution for the congestion problem in VANETs by taking a comprehensive look at the existent congestion control algorithms. In addition, the taxonomy for congestion control algorithms in VANETs is presented based on three classes, namely, proactive, reactive and hybrid. Finally, we have found the criteria in which fulfill prerequisite of a good congestion control algorithm

SymbioCity: Smart Cities for Smarter Networks

The "Smart City" (SC) concept revolves around the idea of embodying cutting-edge ICT solutions in the very fabric of future cities, in order to offer new and better services to citizens while lowering the city management costs, both in monetary, social, and environmental terms. In this framework, communication technologies are perceived as subservient to the SC services, providing the means to collect and process the data needed to make the services function. In this paper, we propose a new vision in which technology and SC services are designed to take advantage of each other in a symbiotic manner. According to this new paradigm, which we call "SymbioCity", SC services can indeed be exploited to improve the performance of the same communication systems that provide them with data. Suggestive examples of this symbiotic ecosystem are discussed in the paper. The dissertation is then substantiated in a proof-of-concept case study, where we show how the traffic monitoring service provided by the London Smart City initiative can be used to predict the density of users in a certain zone and optimize the cellular service in that area.Comment: 14 pages, submitted for publication to ETT Transactions on Emerging Telecommunications Technologie

Providing over-the-horizon awareness to driver support systems

Vehicle-to-vehicle communications is a promising technique for driver support systems to increase traffic safety and efficiency. A proposed system is the Congestion Assistant [1], which aims at supporting drivers when approaching and driving in a traffic jam. Studies have shown great potential for the Congestion Assistant to reduce the impact of congestion, even at low penetration. However, these studies assumed complete and instantaneous availability of information regarding position and velocity of vehicles ahead. In this paper, we introduce a system where vehicles collaboratively build a so-called TrafficMap, providing over-the-horizon awareness. The idea is that this TrafficMap provides highly compressed information that is both essential and sufficient for the Congestion Assistant to operate. Moreover, this TrafficMap can be built in a distributed way, where only a limited subset of the vehicles have to alter it and/or forward it in the upstream direction. Initial simulation experiments show that our proposed system provides vehicles with a highly compressed view of the traffic ahead with only limited communication