NeTS: Small: GOALI: Information Centric Networking on Wheels (IC NoW) - Architecture and Protocols

University Of Southern California, Los Angeles CA

Investigators

Abstract

Recent developments in the automotive industry point to a new emerging domain of vehicular wireless networks, in which vehicles equipped with radios can communicate a wide range of information to each other and the wider Internet, including traffic and safety updates as well as infotainment content. The primary goal of this project is to develop a hybrid network architecture for such vehicular networks which combines both the existing cellular infrastructure as well as new vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communication capabilities. The hypothesis is that such a hybrid network architecture will improve cost, capacity and robustness, compared to either a purely centralized cellular-based approach or a purely distributed V2V approach. Under a hybrid architecture, the project aims to design information-centric protocols for information dissemination, aggregation, and storage, that can exploit the spatio-temporally localized nature of vehicular applications. Further, through mathematical analysis, computer simulations, as well as experimental implementation on a research fleet of vehicles, this project aims to evaluate the performance of these protocols. This project will be a unique academia-industry collaborative project between researchers at the University of Southern California and General Motors. While the focus will very much be on basic research disseminated to the academic community through publications, the close interaction with a prominent industry partner will enable the research to have a strong impact on real-world vehicular networks. Material from this research project will be incorporated into graduate courses at USC. The aimed-for advance in information technology for the automotive domain could have significant social impact by enabling improvements in traffic safety, efficiency, user comfort and productivity.