Improvement of vehicular communications by using 3G capabilities to disseminate control information

Cellular networks have gained a lot of popularity in the context of vehicular communication within the last few years. Existing reference architectures such as CALM already consider them to provide enhanced connectivity to vehicles for data communication. Their capabilities, especially 3G and next-generation, translate into great potential in the vehicular environment, far beyond the provision of data connectivity. In this context we present a solution that uses 3G cellular networks not only as a backup for data communication among vehicles, but also and especially as an efficient mechanism for the dissemination of relevant control information for multiple applications, services, and protocols. Our simulation results demonstrate that by using our 3G-based solution to disseminate connectivity information, vehicular ad hoc routing protocols improve their route selections, which results in a higher packet delivery ratio in urban scenarios.