Towards Efficient Network Resource Management in SDN-based Heterogeneous Vehicular Networks

Managing network resources in highly dynamic vehicular environments is difficult. It is made more challenging when vehicular safety applications demand high bandwidth, reliability and extremely low latency. Standalone wireless access technologies cannot meet these requirements simultaneously and so heterogeneous wireless networking has been proposed as a solution. However heterogeneity introduces other problems, particularly network fragmentation and inefficient use of network resources. Software-defined Networking (SDN) offers logically centralized control and re-programmability of the control plane, with the potential to address these problems of heterogeneity. However, SDN has difficulty dealing with the high levels of mobility associated with highly dynamic vehicular networks. This paper presents ongoing work towards an SDN-based heterogeneous vehicular networking, employing edge-based caching to ensure extremely reliable and low-latency communication for safety-critical cooperative vehicular services.