Automotive networking and applications [Guest Editorial]

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GUEST EDITORIAL

AUTOMOTIVE NETWORKING AND APPLICATIONS

Wai Chen

I

Luca Delgrossi

n this 13th issue of the Automotive Networking and Applications Series, we are pleased to present three articles that address the co-existence of WAVE and wireless LAN (WLAN) in the 5.9 GHz band, the state-of-theart and open research challenges in inter-vehicle communications, and the estimation of dynamic vehicle population within the DSRC communication range. The WAVE technology, envisioned to help prevent vehicle crashes and support traffic information services, has been developing steadily since the 5.9 GHz band was licensed to dedicated short-range communications (DSRC) in 1999. However, there is recent interest in understanding how making more spectrum available to the unlicensed WLAN devices, thus potentially resulting in partial or complete overlap with the DSRC channels, may impact the safety-critical WAVE operation. The first article, “On the Coexistence of IEEE 802.11ac and WAVE in the 5.9 GHz Band” by Y. Park and H. Kim, discusses potential problems associated with coexistence of WAVE and WLAN, such as direct competition for bandwidth between WAVE and WLAN devices, and the hidden terminal problem. The authors first describe the potential problems if WLAN devices are to share the 5.9 GHz DSRC band; first, the priority reversal that may lead to WLAN devices having higher channel access priority (over WAVE devices) within the current standards framework; and second, the hidden terminal problem among WLAN devices that can degrade the WAVE performance. The article then presents experimental and simulation results to show how the WLAN devices using 20 MHz band can adversely affect the operation of the WAVE devices using 10 MHz in terms of the priority reversal and hidden terminal problems. The authors then highlight how their proposed solution approaches can help alleviate these problems and argue that a novel technique, possibly outside the current standards framework, is perhaps necessary to protect the safety-critical communications of the WAVE devices in the presence of the opportunistic WLAN users. The management and control of communications among

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Timo Kosch

Tadao Saito

vehicles as well as between vehicles and network infrastructures has been a very active research field for well over a decade. After a decade of active research on vehicular networking, it is timely for the research community to examine questions such as whether additional research is needed and, if so, what the additional research challenges are. The second article, “Inter-Vehicle Communication: Quo Vadis” by F. Dressler et al., is a summary report of the Dagstuhl Seminar held in September 2013 that brought together leading researchers from academia and industry to discuss the current state of the art and, more important, the open research challenges in the field of inter-vehicle communications (IVC). The three-day seminar was organized as a discussion forum, and the discussions generally focused on four areas: Scientific Foundations, Field Operational Tests, IVC Applications, and Heterogeneous Vehicular Networks. This article presents an overview of the results and findings in these four areas based on the discussions at the seminar. In the WAVE system, vehicles are expected to regularly broadcast messages (beacons) that contain their movement information. Such beacons can be useful to gauge the number of vehicles within the DSRC communications range, whereas such vehicle population knowledge can be useful for safety message overload control or road traffic situation monitoring. The third article, “Counting Vehicles: Learning from Animal Population Estimation” by Y. Park and H. Kim, addresses the issue of counting the neighbor vehicles within the communication range of a vehicle. The authors first point out that simple counting of received WAVE safety messages (beacons) from distinct vehicles can lead to underestimation of the real population, due to factors such as DSRC channel congestion, message collisions and hidden node problems, wireless path loss, and dynamic movement of vehicles, among others. The article then describes population estimation approaches based on the ecology and the epidemiology fields. The authors discuss their simulation experiments on using the classical capture-recapture model and the Jack-

IEEE Communications Magazine • June 2014

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GUEST EDITORIAL knife estimator to illustrate their point that the field of animal counting may hold insights for significantly more accurate vehicle counting. We thank all contributors who submitted manuscripts for this series, as well as all the reviewers who helped with thoughtful and timely reviews. We thank Dr. Sean Moore, Editor-in-Chief, for his support, guidance, and suggestions throughout the process of putting together this issue. We also thank the IEEE publication staff, particularly Ms. Jennifer Porcello, for their assistance and diligence in preparing the issue for publication.

BIOGRAPHIES WAI CHEN ([email protected]) received his B.S. degree from Zhejiang University, and M.S., M.Phil., and Ph.D. degrees from Columbia University, New York. He is chief scientist of China Mobile Research and general manager of the China Mobile Internet-of-Things Research Institute. Previously he was vice president and group director of ASTRI, Hong Kong; and chief scientist and director at Telcordia (formerly known as Bellcore), New Jersey. While at Telcordia, he led a vehicular communications research program for over 10 years in collaboration with a major automobile manufacturer on automotive networking technologies for vehicle safety and information applications. He has been Principal Investigator of several governmentfunded projects on advanced networking technologies research. He was General Co-Chair for the IEEE Vehicular Networking Conference (IEEE VNC 2009–2013) and a Guest Editor for a Special Issue on Vehicular Communications and Networks for the IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications (2011). He also served as a Guest Editor for a Special Issue on Inter-Vehicular Communication (IVC) for IEEE Wireless Communications (2006), and was an IEEE Distinguished Lecturer (2004–2006), Co-Chair of the Vehicle-to-Vehicle Communications Workshop (IEEE V2VCOM 2005–2008) co-located with the IEEE Intelligent Vehicles Symposium, CoChair for the IEEE Workshop on Automotive Networking and Applications (IEEE AutoNet 2006–2008) co-located with IEEE GLOBECOM, and Vice Chair of Technical Program Committee for Vehicular Communications of the IEEE Vehicular Technology Conference (IEEE VTC Spring 2009). LUCA DELGROSSI is manager of the Vehicle-Centric Communications Group at Mercedes-Benz Research & Development North America Inc., Palo Alto, California. He started as a researcher at the International Computer Science Institute (ICSI) of the University of California at Berkeley and received his Ph.D. in computer science from the Technical University of Berlin, Germany. He served for many years as a professor and associate director of the Centre for Research on the Applications of Telematics to Organizations and Society (CRATOS) of the Catholic University at Milan, Italy, where he helped

IEEE Communications Magazine • June 2014

create and manage the Master’s in Network Economy (MiNE) program. In the area of vehicle safety communications, he coordinated the DSRC Radio and On-Board Equipment work orders to produce the DSRC specifications and build the first prototype DSRC equipment as part of the Vehicle Infrastructure Integration (VII) initiative of the U.S. Department of Transportation. The Mercedes-Benz team in Palo Alto is a recognized leader in the R&D of vehicle-to-infrastructure as well as vehicle-to-vehicle communications safety systems. TIMO KOSCH is employed by the BMW Group, where he currently serves as the process owner for electrics/electronics and driver environment for the next generation MINI Clubman as well as the project manager for MINI Connected. Before that, he worked as a team manager for BMW Group Research and Technology, where he was responsible for projects on distributed vehicle information systems. He has been active in a number of national and international research programs, and served as coordinator for the European project COMeSafety, co-financed by the European Commission. For many years, he chaired the Architecture working group and was a member of the Technical Committee of the Car-to-Car Communication Consortium. He studied computer science and economics at Darmstadt University of Technology and the University of British Columbia in Vancouver with scholarships from the German National Merit Foundation and the German Academic Exchange Service. He received his Ph.D. from the computer science faculty of the Munich University of Technology. TADAO SAITO [LF] received a Ph.D. degree in electronics from the University of Tokyo in 1968. Since then he has been a lecturer, an associate professor, and a professor at the University of Tokyo, where he is now a professor emeritus. Since April 2001 he has been chief scientist and CTO of Toyota InfoTechnology Center, where he studies on networks around automobiles. He has worked in a variety of subjects related to digital communication and computer networks. His research includes a variety of communication networks and their social applications such as ITS. Included in his past study, in the 1970s he was a member of the design group for the Tokyo Metropolitan Area Traffic Signal Control System designed to control 7000 intersections under the Tokyo Police Authority. He was the Program Officer of the Ubiquitous Network Development Project of the Prime Minister’s office of the Japanese government (2007–2010), and the project resulted in the M2M project after 2010. He is also Chairman of the New Generation IP Network Promotion Forum of Japan. He has written two books on electronic circuitry, four books on computers, and two books on digital communication and multimedia. From 1998 to 2002 he was Chairman of the Telecommunication Business Committee of the Telecommunication Council of the Japanese government and contributed to the establishment of the regulatory policy of telecommunication business for broadband network deployment in Japan. He is also the Japanese representative to the International Federation of Information Processing General Assembly and Technical Committee 6 (Communication Systems). He is an honorary member of the Institute of Electronics, Information and Computer Engineers (IEICE) of Japan.

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