Olivia Brickley

A Data Dissemination Strategy for Cooperative Vehicular Systems

Cooperative systems in transportation can bring new intelligence for vehicles, roadside systems, operators and individuals by creating a communications platform allowing vehicles and infrastructure to share information. The performance of this underlying communication system has a major impact on the effectiveness of the emerging applications for intelligent transportation systems. Similarly, the approach taken to the dissemination of relevant information throughout the vehicular setting is influenced by the network performance characteristics. This paper investigates the concept of data dissemination in a heterogeneous vehicular wireless environment. A communications architecture which consists of infrastructure based transmission for cooperative vehicular systems is described. Following this, a simple, policy-based solution to establish how best to disseminate the data for an envisaged ITS application is presented. This policy considers the application requirements and the quality of the wireless carrier in determining how the information can be propagated to the relevant recipients in the most effective and efficient manner.

Load balancing for QoS optimisation in wireless LANs utilising advanced cell breathing techniques

Wireless local area networks (WLANs) have become increasingly popular over the last number of years. During this time, user requirements have evolved, resulting in a more diverse mix of services being carried over the wireless medium. In particular, delay sensitive real-time applications such as streaming multimedia and voice over IP are growing in importance. The widely accepted IEEE 802.11b standard, however, was not designed with sufficient quality of service (QoS) constraints for such applications. This paper attempts to optimise the received quality in 802.11b WLAN by balancing the load between various access points while changing the coverage area of each access point, a technique commonly known as cell breathing.

A network centric simulation environment for CALM-based cooperative vehicular systems

The concept of Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) presents new R&D challenges in the transportation and ICT sectors and is currently receiving considerable interest from the research community. The primary objective of ITS is the creation of advanced road traffic systems for improved traffic safety, efficiency, and travelling comfort. Applications such as trip planning, automatic tolling and emergency warnings, among others, are envisaged in a system which can potentially reform modern transportation. Basic vehicle and roadside infrastructure collaboration allows an increase in efficiency and safety and acts as a foundation for an extensive application set to achieve these ITS goals. The use of software tools to simulate the behaviour of a network, and then analysing the effect of various parameters on the network performance, is a crucial task for these new technologies application development and implementation. Currently, since neither infrastructure nor communications capabilities exist in vehicles beyond small scale prototypes, computer simulation is the only viable option in evaluation of potential ITS solutions. This paper presents CALMnet a comprehensive network-centric simulation environment for CALM-based cooperative vehicular systems. Using the OPNET modeler simulation tool, a number of elements necessary for accurate emulation of the complex cooperative vehicular network are identified and addressed. Important areas of consideration include vehicle mobility, communications channel behaviour, application design sets and RSU and OBU device modelling to accurately simulate the envisaged ITS concept.

Communication management for cooperative vehicular systems

With the increasing demand for traffic safety and efficiency and constant search for innovative solutions within the automotive market coupled with supporting initiatives from regulatory domains, the potential of Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) is immense. Basic vehicle and roadside infrastructure collaboration allows an increase in efficiency and safety and acts as the foundation for an extensive application set to achieve the ITS goals of cleaner, safer and more efficient travel. There are some important considerations however. Taking into account the wide array of communication technologies and plethora of proposed applications, this paper aims to address one of the major and largely unexplored challenges facing the ITS research community in relation to service and communication management (SCM), whereby the underlying communications capability is sufficiently exploited to assure satisfactory operation of deployed ITS applications. A complete SCM solution is proposed under an “Always Satisfactorially Connected” (ASC) objective; two probing techniques are examined to assess the performance of the candidate communication networks and a Grey Relational Analysis (GRA) based selection policies are considered. The performance of the proposed SCM schemes is evaluated using CALMNet, a comprehensive network-centric simulation environment for CALM-based cooperative vehicular systems. Results highlight the effect of different techniques on system performance and user satisfaction.

Ensuring "Always Satisfactorily Connected" in Cooperative Vehicular Networks

The concept of Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) presents new R&D challenges in the transportation and ICT sectors and is currently receiving considerable interest from the research community. The primary objective of ITS is the creation of advanced road traffic systems for improved traffic safety, efficiency, and travelling comfort. Applications such as trip planning, automatic tolling and emergency warnings, among others, are envisaged in a system which can potentially reform modern transportation. Basic vehicle and roadside infrastructure collaboration allows an increase in efficiency and safety and acts as the foundation for an extensive application set to achieve these ITS goals. There are some important considerations however; communications are the nervous system of ITS and the major challenge lies in ensuring ITS services are adequately supported by communication services. This paper highlights the issue of service and communications management in cooperative vehicular networks to ensure an Always Satisfactorily Connected (ASC) objective. Using the CALMnet simulation environment, a set of selection objectives following ASC and Always Best Connected (ABC) are examined and compared. Results highlight the impact of changing objectives in the cooperative vehicular environment and confirm that ASC most adequately meet service requirements.

Managing Connected Smart Objects

This paper provides an initial architecture specification of a management framework to address the challenges associated with the robustness and reliability of large scale IoT systems, specifically through mechanisms for orchestration of resources for reliability and dependability supported by IoT functional virtualization.

Service and communication management in cooperative vehicular networks

With the increasing demand for traffic safety and efficiency and constant search for innovative solutions within the automotive market coupled with supporting initiatives from regulatory (governmental) domains, the potential of Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) is vast. Basic vehicle and roadside infrastructure collaboration allows an increase in efficiency and safety and acts as the foundation for an extensive application set to achieve the ITS goals of cleaner, safer and more efficient travel. There are some important considerations however. Taking into account the wide array of communication technologies and plethora of proposed applications, this paper aims to address one of the major and largely unexplored challenges facing the ITS research community in relation to service and communication management (SCM), whereby the underlying communications capability is sufficiently exploited to assure satisfactory operation of deployed ITS applications. Such functionality is integral in ensuring the successful dissemination of relevant information throughout the vehicular network, contributing to the overall success and acceptance of the ITS hypothesis. On examination of the state of the art, a foundational architecture for service and communication management in cooperative vehicular systems is presented. Using this proposed framework, a diverse mix of approaches for SCM are examined using CALMnet, a networkcentric ITS simulation environment, highlighting the effect of different techniques on system performance and user satisfaction.

Service Management for Co-operative Vehicular Systems

The primary objective of Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) is the creation of advanced road traffic systems for improved traffic safety, efficiency, and traveling comfort. Applications such as trip planning, automatic tolling and emergency warnings, among others, are envisaged in a system which can potentially reform modern transportation. Basic vehicle and roadside infrastructure collaboration allows an increase in efficiency and safety and acts as a foundation for an extensive application set to achieve these ITS goals. Strengthened cooperation among vehicles and infrastructure instigates the deployment of a more diverse range of commercial and safety services, assisting travel security and efficiency. As the number of services planned for deployment in the transportation domain grows, it is clear that effective management is necessary to ensure correct operation and satisfactory performance. This service management framework should be flexible and extensible, ensuring adequate support for future intelligent transportation service provision. This article presents a generic architectural service management solution for co-operative vehicle-infrastructure systems. Designed for a Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) based environment and using existing protocols such as SIP and XML, a cooperative monitoring platform is proposed to manage cooperative services.