Vehicular Sensor Network

Many car manufacturers are planning to install wireless connectivityequipment in their vehicles to enable communications with "roadsidebase station" and also between vehicles, for the purposes of safety,driving assistance, and entertainment.

One distinct feature is thatvehicles are highly mobile, with speed up to 30 m/s, though theirmobility patterns are more predictable than those of nodes in MobileAd-hoc Networks (MANET) due to the constraints imposed by road, speedlimits, and commuting habits.

Therefore, these networks requirespecific solutions and identify a novel research area, i.e., VehicularAd-hoc Networks (VANET). VSNs (Vehicle Sensor Network) can be built on top of VANET by equippingvehicles with onboard sensing devices. Sensors can gather not only safety-related information, e.g.,seat occupation, but also more complex multimedia data, e.g., videodata.

Source: netlab.cs.ucla.eduAdded: 14 June 2007