Designing and Prototyping a Middleware for Vehicular Networks

As one of the main tasks of a project for developing an Advanced Cooperative Info mobility System (ACIS), we have devised and partly implemented a communication middleware for info mobility applications on vehicular ad-hoc networks (VANETs). Our VANET is a wireless network established by the cars themselves, with support from a number of fixed roadside units. Both cars and roadside units are equipped with computing resources, wireless networking, and positioning devices. One of the main goals of the ACIS project is to turn each moving car into a sophisticated mobile sensor, able to report about various phenomena including traffic and road conditions. The sensed data are collected through the VANET and feed a remote application for traffic prediction and control. The ACIS communication middleware is broadly based on a publish-subscribe paradigm implemented according to a peer-to-peer distributed organization relying upon the vehicular network. In this paper we illustrate and motivate the architectural choices underlying the ACIS middleware.