Infotainment and road safety service support in vehicular networking: From a communication perspective

Vehicular ad hoc networking is an emerging technology for future on-the-road communications. Due to the virtue of vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure communications, vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) are expected to enable a plethora of communication-based automotive applications including diverse in-vehicle infotainment applications and road safety services. Even though vehicles are organized mostly in an ad hoc manner in the network topology, directly applying the existing communication approaches designed for traditional mobile ad hoc networks to large-scale VANETs with fast-moving vehicles can be ineffective and inefficient. To achieve success in a vehicular environment, VANET-specific communication solutions are imperative. In this paper, we provide a comprehensive overview of various radio channel access protocols and resource management approaches, and discuss their suitability for infotainment and safety service support in VANETs. Further, we present recent research activities and related projects on vehicular communications. Potential challenges and open research issues are also discussed.