Cellular-based vehicle to pedestrian (V2P) adaptive communication for collision avoidance

Road safety is one of the most important applications of vehicular networks. However, improving pedestrian safety via vehicle-to-pedestrian (V2P) wireless communication has not been extensively addressed. In this paper, our vision is to propose a method which enables development of V2P road safety applications via wireless communication and only utilizing the existing infrastructure and devices. As pedestrians´ smartphones do not support the IEEE 802.11p amendment which is customized for vehicular networking, we have initiated an approach that utilizes cellular technologies. Study shows potential of utilizing 3G and LTE for highly mobile entities of vehicular network applications. In addition, some vehicles are already equipped with cellular connectivity but otherwise the driver´s smartphone is used as an alternative. However, smartphone limited battery life is a bottleneck in realization of such pedestrian safety system. To tackle the energy limitation in smartphones, we employ an adaptive multi-level approach which operates in an energy-saving mode in risk-free situations but switches to normal mode as it detects a risky situation. Based on our evaluation and analysis, this adaptive approach considerably saves electrical energy and thus makes the cellular-based road-safety system practical.