A Novel Architecture for Vehicular Traffic Control

Vehicular ad hoc network (VANET) communication has recently become an increasingly popular research topic in the area of wireless networking as well as the automotive industries. Recent advances in vehicular communications make it possible to realize Vehicular Sensor Networks (VSN) where mobile vehicles are equipped with sensors of different nature which can sense events, process sensed data and route messages to other vehicles. The goal of VANET research is to develop a vehicular communication system to enable quick and cost-efficient distribution of data for the benefit of passengers´ safety and comfort. VANETs are not just for fun, their aim is even to avoid accidents using periodic broadcast of messages containing vehicles´ status information such as position and speed vector and a safety system aware of its surrounding to detect potential dangerous situations for the driver. Safety applications could avoid injuries, convenience and leisure applications could increase the comfort of the driver and passengers. In this paper, our main goal is efficient usage of available bandwidth and achieve a low-latency in delivering real time information in various situations in VSN. One of the most prominent issues in vehicular networks regards the quick and scalable delivery of data among all participants that share the same application. We develop an architectural solution that allows vehicles dynamically estimate their transmission range and to exploit this information to effectively propagate a broadcast message with as few hops and transmission as possible.