ABSTRACT
In the context of vehicular networks a very interesting application is represented by the rapid dissemination of messages, especially in the case of emergency and safety applications. Many issues and challenges are related to data dissemination in a dynamic environment, such as vehicular networks. Indeed, in such a high dynamic context, it is fundamental to guarantee fast reception of messages to all relevant vehicles, in order to make people aware of dangerous situations and allow them, for example, to change their routes to destinations in a timely fashion.
Very recently, the use of the Cognitive Radio (CR) paradigm is being exploited for building Vehicular Ad hoc NETworks (VANETs) to acquire more importance. The CR technology is foreseen as a very effective tool to improve the communication efficiency in vehicular networks. It is envisioned that future vehicles will be CR-enabled, and that the CR paradigm in the context of VANETs has a great potential to become a killer application due to the huge consumer market for vehicular communications. The need to be effective is also “justified” by considering the increasing number and varieties of Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) applications and different Quality of Service (QoS) associated with multiplicity of applications. As a result, the CR paradigm can be applied to improve the QoS parameters by simultaneously reducing wireless connectivity cost in the context of VANETs.
