Heterogeneous Vehicular Communications: a Comprehensive Study
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Ad Hoc Networks 75–76 (2018) 52–79 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Ad Hoc Networks journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/adhoc Survey paper Heterogeneous vehicular communications: A comprehensive study ∗ Abdennour Zekri a, , Weijia Jia a,b a Department of Computer Science and Technology , Shanghai Jiao Tong University , Shanghai , China b Centre of Data Science, University of Macau, SAR Macau, China a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t Article history: Vehicular communications have developed rapidly contributing to the success of intelligent transportation Received 27 October 2017 systems. In VANET, continuous connectivity is a huge challenge caused by the extremely dynamic network Revised 25 March 2018 topology and the highly variable number of mobile nodes. Moreover, message dissemination efficiency Accepted 26 March 2018 is a serious issue in traffic effectiveness and road safety. The heterogeneous vehicular network, which Available online 30 March 2018 integrates cellular networks with DSRC, has been suggested and attracted significant attention recently. Keywords: VANET-cellular integration offers many potential benefits, for instance, high data rates, low latency, and VANET extended communication range. Due to the heterogeneous wireless access, a seamless handover decision V2I is required to guarantee QoS of communications and to maintain continuous connectivity between the Heterogeneous wireless networks vehicles. On the other hand, VANET heterogeneous wireless networks integration will significantly help LTE autonomous cars to be functional in reality. This paper surveys and reviews some related studies in the Vertical handover literature that deals with VANET heterogeneous wireless networks communications in term of vertical Data dissemination handover, data dissemination and collection, gateway selection and other issues. The comparison between Autonomous cars different works is based on parameters like bandwidth, delay, throughput, and packet loss. Finally, we outline open issues that help to identify the future research directions of VANET in the heterogeneous environment. © 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction possible [4] . Recent development in automobiles and wireless com- munication technologies have enabled the evolution of ITS which Millions of persons are killed every year around the world in addresses numerous vehicular traffic issues like information dis- the road accidents. According to the World Health Organization semination and traffic congestion. (WHO) reviews fact sheet on road traffic injuries (9 May 2016), Vehicular Ad-hoc Network (VANET) is an integral element of around 1.25 million people die as a result of road traffic crashes ITS in which moving vehicles are connected and communicate each year (3400 deaths per day) [1] . Furthermore, the forecasts are wirelessly. Wireless communication technologies play an essen- even worse; it is estimated that by 2020 road traffic crashes are tial role in assisting both Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) and Vehicle-to- predicted to increase to become the 7th leading reason for death Infrastructure communication (V2I) in VANET. V2V communication [2] . This obviously demonstrates that it has been a challenge to allows vehicles to communicate with each other and to share in- stop these accidents, which mean urgent actions and intensive ef- formation regarding their state (e.g., position, velocity, acceleration, forts are required to prevent and reduce car accidents as well as etc.) or information about the traffic (e.g., state of traffic lights, ac- improving road safety. cidents, traffic jams, the line works, etc.). However, V2I commu- In order to save lives, money, time, and the environment, the nication allows the cooperation between road infrastructure and Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) has been recently attracted vehicles. both academia and industry attention. It is the hope of such tech- Moreover, VANETs are used to support safety-critical applica- nologies that countries such as Japan and Sweden have publicly tions and non-safety infotainment or entertainment based appli- announced an objective of reaching “zero traffic fatality” societies cations. Safety applications such as collision avoidance, pre-crash by 2020 [3] . Intelligent Transportation Society of America (ITSA) sense or lane changing are aimed to minimize road accidents by summarizes its mission declaration as "vision zero" meaning its using traffic monitoring and management applications. Non-safety objective is to decrease the fatal accidents and delays as much as applications enable passengers to access various services like in- teractive communication, internet access, payment services, online games and information updates when vehicles are on the move. ∗ Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: [email protected] (A. Zekri), [email protected] (W. Jia). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.adhoc.2018.03.010 1570-8705/© 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. A. Zekri, W. Jia / Ad Hoc Networks 75–76 (2018) 52–79 53 Research on VANET led to the approval of the IEEE 802.11p capability of LTE supporting vehicular applications is briefly as- standard [5–7] as an amendment to the well-known IEEE 802.11. sessed in [8] . On the other hand, Worldwide Interoperability for The enhanced version IEEE 802.11p forms the standards for Wire- Microwave Access (WiMAX) network has been proposed to cope less Access in Vehicular Environments (WAVE) at a frequency of with the coverage problem in VANETs [38] . Studies in [8] and 5.9 GHz. WAVE protocols (IEEE 802.11p/1609) provide interoperabil- [39] focused on the use of LTE in vehicular networks over hetero- ity between wireless devices On-Board Unit (OBU) of vehicles and geneous wireless networks. Vinel et al. in [39] compared 3GPP LTE infrastructure situated near the roads, Road Side Unit (RSU). Thus, and IEEE 802.11p/WAVE technologies to find which technology can V2V and V2I communications can be established in the vehicu- support cooperative vehicular safety applications. Mane and Jun- lar network. Despite the significant research that has been done narkar in [52] surveyed the techniques and fundamentals of in- on IEEE 802.11p, it suffers from scalability issues, limited coverage ternet access in VANET-Internet integration scenarios. They ded- area, and unbounded delay. icated to improve the performance of mobile gateways and data On the other hand, cellular networks have been developed in collection for giving priority to emergency messages dissemination. recent decades. Some of the disadvantages related to IEEE 802.11p, Moreover, the recent study in [40] reviewed V2I communication and the potential for the use of existing networks, have motivated over heterogeneous multi-tier with diverse Radio Access Technol- researchers to investigate the possibility of using cellular networks ogy (RAT) network environments. Shahid et al. in [54] presented in vehicular applications instead of IEEE 802.11p. By reviewing the a survey about different VANET technologies; whereas, a compari- characteristics of different access technologies, it is concluded that son between UMTS and LTE for vehicular safety communication at the cellular network is the best option as an alternative to IEEE intersections shown in [55] . Besides, Mir et al. in [56] presented 802.11p for supporting vehicular applications. Some of the distin- a hybrid communication system between LTE and WAVE protocol. guishing characteristics associated with LTE are high data rate, high However, hybrid approaches suitable for heterogeneous vehicular spectral efficiency, and low latency in the control plane [8] . communication combining both LTE and 802.11p were proposed In order to ensure vehicles to access the network, even in places in [44] . Various LTE-VANET collaborations were offered in [45–47] . uncovered by RSUs, existing radio access networks such as cellular The study in [36] by Zheng et al. concluded that the heterogeneous networks (3 G/LTE) and Wi-Fi may be employed to improve vehic- vehicular networking with LTE for V2I communications and DSRC ular communications. The potential impact of heterogeneous wire- for V2V communications is one of the best solutions for supporting less networks has been confirmed by an ever-increasing amount of vehicular services. mobile internet traffic, which cannot solely be absorbed by cellu- In the current study, we present a comprehensive overview lar data communication networks. Then, it can form heterogeneous of vehicular communications in the heterogeneous environment. vehicular networks that can be a combination of VANETs and cel- Therefore, in contrast with existing surveys in the literature, this lular networks for vehicular communications. work focuses on comparing various solutions proposed by the Seamless handover is the first necessary step when internet VANET research community in term of handover, data dissemi- connection needs to migrate between heterogeneous networks. nation, gateway selection, QoS and other concerns. The compari- The necessity for vertical handover can be initiated for convenience son between different works is based on metrics like bandwidth, rather than connectivity reasons (e.g., according to user choice for throughput, delay, communication overhead, channel capacity and a specific service). Two of the major challenges in vertical han- packet loss. Besides, we also explore some open issues for future dover management are seamlessness and automation aspects in investigations in heterogeneous vehicular communications. Many network switching.