VANBA: A Simple Handover Mechanism for Transparent, Always-On V2V Communications

This paper presents VANBA, a simple, ready-to-use mechanism to perform vertical handovers in vehicular networks that integrates the essential functionalities of the Always Best Connected (ABC) paradigm in a transparent way both to the user and the upper-layer applications even in terminals with limited processing capabilities. This mechanism operates at the network layer and achieves quasi-continuous communication during the handover process by monitoring the reachability of the destination node. A basic handover scenario using VANBA has been implemented at Telefonica I+D's labs on Linux-based carPC and laptops enabled with WiFi and 3G as communication media. This scenario, which emulates an in-car dual-network terminal that uses 3G as backup communications for WiFi, is used to compare the main features of VANBA with respect to other handover solutions being proposed in emerging standards.