Vehicular Communications: A Network Layer Perspective

Vehicular communications, referring to information exchange among vehicles, infrastructures, etc., have attracted a lot of attention recently due to great potential to support intelligent transportation, various safety applications, and on-road infotainment. In this paper, we provide a comprehensive overview of a recent research on enabling efficient and reliable vehicular communications from the network layer perspective. First, we introduce general applications and unique characteristics of vehicular communication networks and the corresponding classifications. Based on different driving patterns, we categorize vehicular networks into manual driving vehicular networks and automated driving vehicular networks, and then discuss the available communication techniques, network structures, routing protocols, and handoff strategies applied in these vehicular networks. Finally, we identify the challenges confronted by the current vehicular networks and present the corresponding research opportunities.