UMIC Ultra high-speed Mobile Information and Communication

UMIC/i4 guest seminar

Prof. Luigi Fratta

Dipartimento di Elettronica e Informazione Politecnico

Inter-Vehicles Communication:
A New Frontier of ADHOC Networking
The constant increase in the number of cars on the roads calls for effective means to improve
road safety, transport efficiency, and passengers' comfort. To this end, the research community,
the industries and the governments all over the world are investing much of their efforts and
money in the development of integrated Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) based on
wireless communication networks. Several national/international projects have been recently
launched around the world: DSRC, VSC, VII in USA, C2CCC in Europe, AVS in Japan and
Network on Wheels in Germany, to name a few.
The road safety paradigm is moving from a passive one (air bags, ESP, etc.) to an active one,
where sensors, radars, cameras, navigation systems, and microprocessors, commonly
installed in vehicles, are integrated with wireless communication systems to support
applications such as parking-assistance, lane-keeping, adaptive cruise-control, and many
others. Vehicular Ad hoc networks (VANETs) can efficiently warn and inform drivers via direct
wireless vehicle to vehicle communications, eventually reducing reaction time and information
availability limitation.
The creation of high-performance, highly reliable, highly scalable, and secure Vehicular Ad hoc
NETworks (VANETs) poses extraordinary challenges related to the channel access, the routing
information, the control of highly variable network topologies, the design of flexible middleware
solutions to effectively support the application layer. In this context, the talk will highlight the
current state of the art of VANETs over-viewing ongoing projects and standardization efforts.
Moreover, we will also point out open issues on the design of communication protocols for
VANETs, discuss on the directions for further research in this field.

Born in 1942, he graduated in Electronic Engineering in 1966. He has been a Full Professor of
Telecommunication Networks since 1980. His research interests include: communication and
computer networks, multiple access protocols, local and metropolitan area networks, wireless
personal communications, combinatorial optimization.

Thursday 29 January 2009, 10:00 a.m.

UMIC Research Centre, Room 025, Mies-van-der-Rohe-Str. 15