Cooperation advances on vehicular communications: A survey

Abstract

Vehicular communications refer to a wide range of networks adopted in environments characterized by sparse connectivity, frequent network partitioning, intermittent connectivity, long propagation delays, asymmetric data rates, and high error rates. These environments may also be characterized by a potential non-existence of an end-to-end path. Cooperation among network nodes is crucial to address these challenging connectivity issues. In order to contribute for a better network performance, network nodes should to share their storage, bandwidth, and energy resources with each other. By sharing their resources each node contributes to store, carry, and forward network data in order to mutually enhance the overall network performance. However, not all network nodes are able to cooperate and sometimes they may have an uncooperative behavior in order to save their own resources. Such behavior severely affects the network functionality and performance. Then, this survey overviews the most recent advances related to cooperation on vehicular communications. The goal of this work is not only to present how cooperation between network nodes has advanced, but also to show the benefits and drawbacks of cooperation, and to identify open issues providing guidelines for further contributions in this type of networks.