Vehicular networking for autonomous driving [Guest Editorial]

The research area of vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2X) networking and respective cooperative driving applications has been growing in recent decades. Now it is clear that V2X wireless technology will be a communication baseline for many promising cooperative automotive applications, which will make driving safer, more energy-efficient, and more comfortable. Autonomous driving is the next step, which is considered a strategic direction by many vehicle manufacturers. Although there is still a long way before fully autonomous vehicles are introduced massively in ubiquitous city environments, it is already practically feasible to consider fully automatic operation of vehicles in restricted areas (harbors, parking lots, dedicated public transport lanes). Autonomous cooperative driving enabled by V2X communications has highly demanding operating conditions and generates delay-sensitive data traffic with requirements for high reliability.