A proxy-based framework for QoS-enabled Internet access in VANETS

A Vehicle Ad hoc Network (VANET) is composed of vehicles, with short range wireless communication capabilities. Vehicular networks can support both Vehicle-to-Vehicle and Vehicle-to-Infrastructure communications, and are targeted at the delivery of both road safety applications and non-safety applications, including comfort applications. Comfort applications aim to provide information and entertainment to people on traveling. These applications are typically bandwidth-demanding, have real time delivery requirements, and ask for the network capability to offer continuous access to the Internet together with a controlled Quality of service (QoS). To better cope with the dynamic nature of this network, the IEEE 802.11p has been proposed as a draft amendment to the IEEE 802.11 standard. Its core mechanism is based on the Enhanced Distributed Channel Access (EDCA) for QoS management. VANET-to-Internet access needs the cooperation of certain elements of the network to serve as gateways, to choose the optimal route for them and maintain it, and to ensure users preferences and requirements of QoS. One of the challenges in VANET-to-Internet communication is how to provide connection in areas where no gateways are available. In this paper, we introduce a new QoS framework to ensure data forwarding to Internet in gateway-free area. It consists of a Proxy-based Vehicle to Internet (PVI) protocol, with a Prediction-based Routing (PBR) algorithm and IEEE 802.11p EDCA scheme.