When Transportation Meets Communication: V2P over VANETs

• Published in: 2010 IEEE 30th International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems pp. 567 - 576
• Main Authors: Nianbo Liu, Ming Liu, Jiannong Cao, Guihai Chen, Wei Lou
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Published: IEEE 01.06.2010
• Subjects: carpool; Computer science; Distributed computing; Internet; Mobile communication; Mobile computing; Peer to peer computing; ride-sharing; Road transportation; Road vehicles; Supply and demand; V2P; VANET; Vehicle driving
• ISBN: 142447261X; 9781424472611
• ISSN: 1063-6927
• DOI: 10.1109/ICDCS.2010.83

Information interaction is a crucial part of modern transportation activities. In this paper, we propose the idea of Vehicle-to-Passenger communication (V2P), which allows direct, instant, and flexible communication between moving vehicles and roadside passengers. With pocket wireless devices, passengers can easily join VANETs as roadside nodes, and express their travel demands, e.g., taking a free ride or calling a taxi via radio queries over VANETs. Once a matched vehicle is found through the disseminated queries, the driver can decide whether to provide corresponding services, especially the carrying of passengers and goods. We investigate the main challenges in vehicle calling, establish a trip history model to predict vehicle movement, and develop typical query dissemination schemes to match the target vehicle in vehicular networks. With V2P over VANETs, vehicle transportation is capable of open and efficient P2P information interaction, and thus benefits from relevant efficiency improvement. Based on a realistic travel survey and simulation, we prove that vehicle calling is effective and efficient in casual carpooling and taxi calling.