Advances on Network Protocols and Algorithms for Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks

Vehicular Ad Hoc Network (VANET) is an emerging area of wireless ad hoc networks that facilitates ubiquitous connectivity between smart vehicles through Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) or Vehicle-to-Roadside (V2R) and Roadside-toVehicle (R2V) communications. This emerging field of technology aims to improve safety of passengers and traffic flow, reduces pollution to the environment and enables in-vehicle entertainment applications. The safety-related applications could reduce accidents by providing drivers with traffic information such as collision avoidances, traffic flow alarms and road surface conditions. Moreover, the passengers could exploit an available infrastructure in order to connect to the internet for infomobility and entertainment applications [1]. The increasing necessity of this network is an impetus for leading car manufacturers, research communities and governments to increase their efforts toward creating a standardized platform for vehicular communications. However, VANET’s unique characteristics and special requirements excite new challenges to the research community. To address these challenges in both safetyand comfort-oriented applications, there is a pressing need to develop new protocols and algorithms for channel characterization and modeling, Medium Access Control (MAC), obstacle modeling, adaptive geographical routing to sparse and dense traffic conditions. This special issue aimed to theme innovative research achievements in the field of vehicular networks and communications. We were seeking original, innovative and unpublished papers related to radio obstacle modeling in urban vehicular environments [2], VANET routing protocols [3] (such as efficient geographical routing [4], delay-aware routing protocols [5], delay tolerant routing protocols [6], routing protocol using movement trends [7], etc.), adaptive beaconing protocols [8], mobility management and handovers [9], network size [10], transmission power adaptation systems [11], Quality of Service [12], security and privacy issues [13], efficient packet forwarding optimization[14], modeling and simulation [15], etc. We also welcomed other typical VANET topics such as channel characterization, congestion control and resource management, medium access protocols and channel assignments, mobility models, message dissemination for safety-related applications, cooperative vehicular communications, test-beds, case studies, experimental systems and real evaluations. Our purpose was also to include new VANET topics such as Inter-domain Proxy Mobile IPv6 in VANETs [16], Vehicular Cloud Computing [17] and security in Vehicular Clouds [18]. We received 77 submissions and only the best 12 papers have been accepted, which means an acceptance ratio of 15.58 %. We give many thanks to the reviewers for their time revising and providing useful comments to the authors and to the authors for their patience when some steps have been delayed because of the amount of received papers. J. Lloret (*) Integrated Management Coastal Research Institute, Universidad Politecnica de Valencia, C/Paranimf, n° 1, Grao de Gandia 46730, Spain e-mail: jlloret@dcom.upv.es