Proceedings of the fourth ACM international workshop on Vehicular ad hoc networks

Welcome to the Fourth ACM International Workshop on Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks (VANET 2007) in beautiful Montreal! After the success of the previous three events, 2007 is a great year to continue this exciting workshop. The application of short- to medium-range vehicle communication systems (vehicle-to-vehicle as well as vehicle-to-roadside) technologies is closer to reality than ever before and the widespread deployment of a communications infrastructure on the roadways and in production vehicles has the potential to improve transportation and the quality of life in ways not imagined a generation ago. VANET technology is entering a critical phase where academia, industry and governments worldwide are investing significant time and resources to either prepare for a larger scale deployment decision or to already deploy this technology so that its many benefits in the areas of safety, improvement of traffic flow and convenience can be leverage. In the U.S. the Vehicle Infrastructure Integration Initiative (VII) as well as the Vehicle Safety Communication Consortium (VSC) made very good progress, developing the first real 5.9Ghz Dedicated Short Range Communication Technology (DSRC) Radio and sample on-board equipment to start piloting and field-testing DSRC technology and its applications in various Proof of Concept and Field Operational Trials across the U.S. The goal is to come to a viability decision for VII and DSRC by the end of 2008. In Japan Vehicle to Infrastructure Communication for Safety and Mobility is developed in the Smartway project. Among others, one of the goals of Smartway is to enable the realization of services related to "Safety and safe driving" via communication technology. Vehicle-to-Vehicle Communication for Safety is also looked at in the Advanced Safety Vehicle (ASV) program sponsored by the Japanese Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport (MLIT). In Europe the COMeSafety program that started last year supports the eSafety Forum with respect to all issues related to vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure communications as the basis for cooperative intelligent road transport systems. A new project called SIM-TD (Safe and Intelligent Mobility Testfield Germany) started as a pilot project within the VDA (the German automobile manufacturers association) with the goal to verify feasibility of vehicle-centric communication in Germany. The goal of this workshop is to present and discuss recent advances in the development of wireless vehicular ad hoc networking (VANET) and to bring experts from different parts of the world together to exchange ideas and to discuss exciting challenges and their solutions in this very active VANET community. Despite the proliferation of conference and workshops on VANETs we have witnessed this year (which reflects the growing interest of the academia and industry community in this exciting research field), ACM VANET continues to play a central role in the dissemination of the most advanced ideas and research solutions in the field.