Roadside and moving WAVE providers: Effectiveness and potential of hybrid solutions in urban scenarios

Vehicular Ad-Hoc NETworks (VANETs) are expected to deliver a wide range of services, spanning from safety alerting to drive assistance and entertainment: however, most of the literature focuses on safety services and fewer papers analyze non-safety ones and the multi-channel operations envisioned by the IEEE 802.11p/WAVE standards. The purpose of this paper¹ is to fill this gap and to gain a deeper insight into possible issues related to service access and provisioning in VANETs. Moreover, with the specific aim of covering new aspects of this topic, the paper sets its analysis in a scenario where connectivity services are offered to vehicles by fixed and/or moving WAVE providers and wireless propagation is hindered by a realistic urban setting. The two aspects together pose a novel interesting problem and help identify potential issues and draw new solutions.