Deployment and evaluation of a real wireless multi-hop heterogeneous vehicular network: lessons learned

Abstract

Internet access and communications may occur in very different scenarios and with a wide variety of devices. Above all, there is a raising trend for mobility: users want to be able to communicate anytime, anywhere. How would our lives change if the communication devices were our own vehicles? Although it could seem to be science fiction, there have been huge advances in research in the field of vehicular communications lately, leading to new standardization proposals, such as a medium access control layer specifically suited for vehicular networks: the IEEE 802.11p.

Vehicular networks are very likely to become a reality not too far to come, and there are a plethora of research works in the literature. However, the research community is still lacking practical experience in evaluating vehicular communication mechanisms in real life scenarios. With the goal of gaining insights into practical issues of vehicular networks, we have deployed an experimental platform and assessed the suitability of existing hardware and software tools. This platform comprises heterogeneous wireless access technologies, namely the ones that will be most likely present in a vehicular scenario: 3G and IEEE 802.11. In order to be able to discover and face real problems when experimenting with a vehicular communication protocol, we have chosen a vehicular routing optimization mechanism for vehicular networks, called VARON, which was developed and extensively simulated, but not implemented and tested yet in a real vehicular scenario. The physical deployment of this prototype has brought out some issues concerning the wireless links and the hindrances of current IEEE 802.11 technology for its use in vehicular environments.

This master thesis gathers the lessons learned in the process and the challenges to be faced in such a demanding deployment, thus paving the way for near future experimentation.