ABSTRACT
Vehicular networks are an essential part of today’s research and tomorrow’s reality. The ability to connect speedy vehicles does not only open endless possibilities for application advancements and enhancements to the vehicular experience, but it also helps avoid many dangers and issues that arise such as accidents, time and money wasted because of traffic, and many others. Previously, vehicular connectivity primarily relied on either vehicles communicating with each other, which are called Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) communications, or vehicles communicating through network infrastructure on the roadside called Vehicle-to-Infrastructure (V2I) mode. The V2V technology relies on Dedicated Short-Range Communication (DSRC) channels, while V2I relies on the existing allocated bandwidth for the infrastructure technology.
Infrastructures utilized in the V2I communications are networks available on roads such as cellular networks, WiMAX or other telecommunication networks. However, due to bandwidth limitations of infrastructure networks and time delay performance requirements for vehicular communications, conventional infrastructure communications are no longer adequate for vehicular communication. Considering this current necessity, the field of cognitive vehicular networks has emerged. In this chapter, we introduce the concept of vehicular networks, the existing communication methods, the cognitive radio technology, and its applicability to vehicular networks, along with a brief introduction to the advancement and research issues in the cognitive vehicular networks.
