A Software Defined Vehicular Network using Cooperative Intelligent Transport System Messages

The increasing need for smarter means of transportation has brought a greater focus on Vehicular Ad-Hoc Networks (VANETs). VANETs are characterized by frequent topology changes due to the high node mobility, and most of the existing network protocols for mobility management are not well prepared for persistent horizontal handovers. This work studies the integration of Software-Defined Networking (SDN) in the Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) universe for the mobility management of VANETs. The idea is to explore the Cooperative Intelligent Transport Systems (C-ITS) messages in the SDN universe allowing the SDN controller to have a deeper view of the topology state. This global view gives the controller proactiveness, anticipating handovers even before they happen, reducing handover delays, and thus, improving the user experience. To evaluate the proposed approach, two types of environments were considered, laboratory and real-world at city scale with connected vehicles and infrastructure. The performance results have shown great improvements compared with a nonproactive approach: exploring the benefits of integrating the ITS and SDN universes, we obtained an almost zero packet loss rate, a reduction in the average delay and an increase in the connectivity time.