Context-aware Communication in Large Scale Vehicular Ad-hoc Networks: Concepts, methods and applications

Rapid advancements in embedded technology enable vehicles to become equipped with embedded on-board computation and wireless communication capabilities. Intelligent transportation systems (ITS) is an emerging research field that demands efficient delivery of information between vehicles for the creation of useful and usable telematic applications operating in nomadic large-scale environments. Some interesting inter-vehicular applications made possible by this technology include accident avoidance, incident notification, congestion monitoring and parking space allocation. For these types of applications it is crucial that the peers receive the \textit{right information at the right time and the right place} to make informed decisions. However, due to the ephemeral, highly dynamic and mobile nature of the vehicular networks we face four major challenges: (1) how to identify what information is relevant to take actions or make decisions, (2) how to disseminate the relevant information to the interested peers efficiently, (3) how to coordinate with other peers and (4) last but not the least, how to compare the effectiveness of different algorithms and protocols.