A Flexible On-Board Unit Architecture for Sensor Data and Fleet Management Services

We present a flexible on-board unit (OBU) architecture that provides Vehicle-to-Everything (V2X) communication services. The architecture includes commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) hardware components and open source software components. A lambda-like architecture relegates the transfer of full-resolution bulk data over IEEE 802.11 without excluding the ability for high priority short messages to be sent via other means (DSRC, LTE, etc.). In addition to collecting data from the vehicle's sensors, an OBU can collect data from other, visited, sources, e.g., sensor networks operating within range. Bulk data transfers follow a Delay-Tolerant Networking (DTN) paradigm, by exploiting occasional encounters with other peers to perform data exchanges. In this paper, we summarize our experiences in developing such a system.