Keepalive service for VANET applications

Many applications are designed for vehicular networks, like chat, dynamic map update or touristic information. The need of services used as building blocks for these applications is then emerging: localization, map matching, data collect, and so on. When a unicast communication is required, applications rely generally on naming, localization and routing services. This approach consumes many network resources and leads to poor performances when the network dynamic is high. We then propose an efficient service, named keepalive, to ensure the continuity of a communication that began between two mobile neighbors. The major strengths of our proposal are that it relies only on local exchanges of identifiers and it is less resource consuming than usual networking services. Moreover, it is beneficial for a large set of applications, including download from road side units or follow me application for instance. Road tests and performance study confirm the efficiency of the keepalive service.