Vehicular networks and applications: Challenges, requirements and service opportunities

A very challenging and up-to-date topic of vehicular communications brings about certain challenges in terms of radio access technologies, spectrum allocation, networking and automation aspects. This paper provides an insight into the relevant technologies of both the physical and medium access control layers, as well as the network layer. In particular the topic of transmission bandwidth and latency is discussed for the former and the question of autonomic and cooperative networking is analyzed for the latter. The discussed aspects are presented from the perspective of the challenges, requirements and service opportunities for vehicular networks and their applications.