V2V and V2R for Cellular Resources Saving in Vehicular Applications

Considering vehicles as sensors for traffic and pollution information is a new paradigm to monitor the environment and to open the way to an efficient smart navigation. In this work we focus on the uplink acquisition of traffic information from vehicles toward a remote control center. With the increase in the number of vehicles equipped with on board units (OBUs) enabling cellular transmissions, this service is leading to higher loads for the cellular network itself and, consequently, to higher costs. In this paper we discuss the opportunity to take advantage of vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) and vehicle-to-roadside communications in addition to vehicle-to-infrastructure cellular transmissions. The objective is twofold: to investigate the potential reduction of data transmitted over the cellular networks and to verify the potential transmission delay reduction, by sharing and aggregating information through V2V communications. Results are obtained through an integrated simulation platform jointly taking into account both realistic vehicular environments and wireless network communication aspects.