C3 -- Car-to-car cooperation for vehicular ad-hoc networks
Motivation and Approach
Advances in network connectivity, storage and processing capabilities are making possible new inter-vehicle systems with a wide-range of interesting applications focusing on increasing automotive safety, providing passengers with information and entertainment, reducing vehicular environmental impact, and achieving smooth traffic flow on the roads, among others.
In this project we are exploring distributed systems issues in large-scale, inter-vehicle ad-hoc networks, where moving vehicles communicate with each other via short-range wireless transmission. Participating vehicles are assumed to be equipped with processors, storage and wireless networking capabilities, as well as a GPS receiver and road maps that help determine each vehicle's current location. High-level services are built following a cooperative model that depends solely on the contribution of participating vehicles - we call this model C3 for Car-to-Car Cooperation.
A particularly appealing concrete example application is a traffic advisory system that informs drivers of current conditions on relevant roads in real time. Intelligent Transporation Systems, which have been deployed in the US, Europe and Asia, attempt to address this problem. Existing ITS deployments, however, are infrastructure-heavy in that they rely on roadside sensors, networks, etc. While such systems provide substantial benefits, deployment and maintenance is very costly. In C3 we envision a near to real-time advisory system that is at once scalable, fault-tolerant and adaptable; it does not rely on any infrastructure installed on the roads, but adopts a cooperative model depending solely on the information collected by instrumented cars through their own sensors and via exchange with other vehicles they come across.
In the News
- C3: Car-to-car cooperation — Three young faculty members take aim at traffic, in McCormick By Design, Spring 2006.
People
- Fabián E. Bustamante, Faculty PI
- David Choffnes
- John Otto
- Olusanya Soyannwo
Collaborators
- Prof. Tito Homem-de-Mello, Department of Industrial Engineering & Management Sciences, Northwestern U.
- Prof. Karen Smilowitz-Corr, Department of Industrial Engineering & Management Sciences and Transportation Center, Northwestern U.
Publications
- John S. Otto and Fabián E. Bustamante. Distributed or Centralized Traffic Advisory Systems -- The Application's Take. In Proc. of IEEE SECON, June 2009.
- John S. Otto, Fabián E. Bustamante, and Randall A. Berry. Down the Block and Around the Corner -- The Impact of Radio Propagation on Inter-vehicle Wireless Communication. In Proc. of IEEE International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems (ICDCS), June 2009.
- David R. Choffnes and Fabián E. Bustamante. An Integrated Mobility and Traffic Model for Vehicular Wireless Networks. In Proc. of the 2nd ACM International Workshop on Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks (VANET), September 2005.
- David Choffnes and Fabián E. Bustamante. STRAW - An Integrated Mobility and Traffic Model for VANETs. In Proc. of the 10th International Command and Control Research and Technology Symposium (CCRTS), June 2005. (This is an early version of Tech. Report NWU-CS-05-03).
- David R. Choffnes and Fabián E. Bustamante. Modeling Vehicular Traffic and Mobility for Vehicular Wireless Networks. Tech. Report NWU-CS-05-03, Department of Computer Science, Northwestern University, 2005.
Resources
C3 Projects
- C3R -- Urban Sustainability Through Car-to-car Cooperation
- VFN - Virtual Ferry Networking for Exploiting Emergent Behavior in Vehicular Networks
Related Projects
VANET projects
- CarNet: A Scalable Ad Hoc Wireless Network System
- FleetNet
- Network-on-Wheels
- UMass DieselNet - A Bus-based Disruption Tolerant Networks
- CarTalk
- CarTel
- E-Road
ITS projects
