Vehicular event sharing with a mobile peer-to-peer architecture

In vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs), different types of information can be useful to drivers. Such networks are highly dynamic due to both the movements of the vehicles and the short range of the wireless communications. Thus, the information exchanges between vehicles about relevant information can only rely on short interactions. Therefore, an efficient mechanism to manage and disseminate the relevant information is required. Specifically, we present in this paper a system for data sharing in vehicular networks, which we call Vehicular Event Sharing with a mobile Peer-to-peer Architecture (VESPA). In this system, a new technique based on the concept of Encounter Probability is proposed for vehicles to share information using vehicle-to-vehicle communications. The objective is to facilitate the dissemination of information between vehicles when they meet each other, taking into account the relevance of the data to the drivers. Besides, the relevance must also be considered to inform a driver about the interesting events. Moreover, our proposal takes into account any type of event (e.g., available parking spaces, obstacles in the road, information relative to the coordination of vehicles in emergency situations, etc.) in the network. An experimental evaluation and the implemented prototype show the interest of the system. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.