Interference-Aided Vehicular Networks: Future Research Opportunities and Challenges

Research efforts in vehicular communication networks have been driven by the need to achieve high data rates for value-added services and safety applications. The proliferation of billions of connected devices along with their ever growing data demands can potentially cause severe congestion in vehicular networks unless effective solutions are developed. In this context, the multiuser interference encountered in vehicular ad hoc networks is a major performance bottleneck. The interference among vehicles needs to be harnessed to meet the high data rate requirements of heterogeneous vehicular communication networks. This work proposes a novel paradigm of interference-aided vehicular networks in which the interference signals are exploited for communication-related operations such as message flooding, energy harvesting, channel estimation, signal alignment, and link security. We also highlight the technical and socio-economic challenges that must be addressed for successful implementation of interference- aided vehicular communication networks.