Vehicular Sensor Networks: General Aspects and Implementation Issues

Abstract

The usage of sensors and sensor networks to sense road and vehicle phenomena and send sensor data to relevant entities (e.g., users, institutions etc.) gives rise to the concept of Vehicular Sensor Networks (VSNs). VSNs are a subset of Vehicular Ad-hoc NETworks (VANETs) placed either in vehicles or alongside roads creating an end-to-end reliable network for disseminating sensor data gathered from a vehicular environment. Depending on the communication path, VSNs encompass Vehicle-to-Infrastructure or Infrastructure-to-Vehicle (V2I and I2V, respectively) architectures and Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) architecture. The former deals with communication between sensors from a vehicular environment and specific Road Side Units (RSUs) or external gateways, whereas the latter one defines the communication among sensors in a vehicular environment in a pure ad hoc, i.e., infrastructureless, fashion. The VSNs have been widely investigated and proved to be very useful for supporting car and road safety, traffic pattern analysis, road surface diagnosis, urban environmental monitoring, street-level air pollution monitoring, and many other transportation application systems. Their increasing popularity emphasizes the need for thorough analysis of their most relevant features in order to pave the way toward VSNs’ full practical deployment.