FleaNet: A Virtual Market Place on Vehicular Networks

In this study, we introduce the concept of a virtual ¿flea market¿ over a vehicular ad hoc network (VANET) called FleaNet. FleaNet customers express their demands/offers to buy/sell items via radio queries. These queries are opportunistically disseminated, exploiting the mobility of other customers, until a matching customer/vendor is found. We identify the key performance metrics, namely, query resolution latency, scalability, mobility, and churning, and evaluate their impact on performance using analytic and simulation models. The results show that FleaNet can function as an effective virtual marketplace.