Vehicular Communications: Ubiquitous Networks for Sustainable Mobility

Vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) or vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) communications are enabling technologies for a host of applications, ranging from infotainment and web browsing to cooperative driving for enhanced traffic safety and efficiency. The latter two application areas, traffic safety and efficiency, address the issue of sustainable mobility and are high on the political agendas around the world. This is for good reasons, since traffic volumes are projected to increase with the corresponding risk of increased number of traffic jams, increased emissions and natural resource consumption, and increased number of injured and killed. The International Energy Agency reports for the year 2008 a global vehicle fleet of 800 million vehicles and predicts more than 2 billion vehicles by the year 2050. In a recent WHO and World Bank report it is stated that, without appropriate action, road injuries are predicted to be the third leading contributor to the global burden of disease. V2V and V2I based ubiquitous networking, collectively referred to as V2X communications, is one of the engineering community?s major contributions to address this gloomy prediction