Communication on the Road

As positioning devices, sensing technologies and wireless interfaces become standard commodities, all sorts of vehicles such as cars, buses and trucks will soon be able to operate in a networked fashion, sharing vital information ranging from traffic congestion data to accident alarm signals and making navigation and safety decisions based on the messages they receive from neighboring nodes. In addition, vehicle-to-vehicle communications open a myriad of new applications, including location-based information dissemination, vehicle-based social networking and distributed interactive games. So far, in most applications navigation and communication are viewed as separate capabilities with little or no relationship to each other. Clearly, vehicle mobility and node density can vary dramatically depending on the road network and daily traffic patterns, and, consequently, wireless network connectivity between vehicles is extremely dynamic and highly correlated with the position of the vehicles and the physical characteristics of the road. It is thus important to explore how one can exploit the interplay between real-time navigation and wireless communication to achieve stable and efficient traffic and information flows.