Multi-authority virtual network for intelligent transportation systems

Dedicated information networks for transportation systems will be integrated with public networks as wired- and wireless-phone networks and Internet. When we realize such an integrated network, a difficulty lies in the fact that the integrated network does nor have any single authority that can decide priorities between competing communication requests. To treat multiple authorities, we propose an auction scheme to prioritize services in the information network. In the scheme, messages that pay higher prices get higher priorities. We also propose to use a technology of a mobile agent to realize the scheme. We show some examples of mobile agents and how they can solve competition between different authorities in the auction model. We are now developing an integrated network, called IQnet (integrated and qualified network), for intelligent transportation systems. The auction scheme and the mobile agent technology proposed in this paper will be implemented as portions of the functions of IQnet.