Toward Information-Centric Vehicular Cloud: Technologies, Challenges, and Opportunities

Abstract

At present, road-safety problems such as traffic accidents have become increasingly serious. In the next ten years, road safety problems will lead to 13 million deaths if no effective measures are taken. Rapid retrieval of road information can prevent most traffic accidents, so it is becoming an important measure to solve road-safety problems. However, with increasing complexity and diversification of road information, an individual vehicle can no longer produce the entire traffic and road information due to limitations of visual angles and resources. In this circumstance, the concept of Vehicular Cloud (VC) is proposed to enable resource sharing and collaboration among cloud members as a solution for overcoming resource limitations. In this article, we analyze the features of VC and the advantages of the information-centric model, and propose that the information-centric model could be an ideal solution for achieving VC. Then, we discuss the open challenges encountered in enabling VC using the information-centric model, and some possible solutions.