Multi-level SDN with vehicles as fog computing infrastructures: A new integrated architecture for 5G-VANETs

The spectacular emergence of connected and autonomous vehicles coupled with their evergrowing demands on processing, computation and communication resources pose new challenges to provide reliable vehicular services. Here, a combination of a multi-level SdN Approach and a foG computing architEcture based on Vehicles as Infrastructures paradigm, called VISAGE, is proposed for future 5G-VANET systems. By using vehicles as fog infrastructures and integrating them with local SDN controllers, the QoS of vehicular applications and protocols becomes more efficient in terms of computation time and communication delays. This is explained by offloading the computing services from the cloud to the edge of networks, making use of the abundant resources offered by vehicles and making network control decisions locally. Through three typical uses cases of our proposed 5G era vehicular architecture, we show the promising benefits of our approach in terms of communication and computation capacities.