The history of vehicular networks

Abstract

The chapter begins by providing a short historical description of the evolution of the technologies and the standards enabling a vehicle to communicate with other vehicles and the surrounding environment and become part of an extended intelligent transportation system (ITS) communication system able to support a wide range of services by using different communication media. In the following, the evolution from the V2I (vehicle to infrastructure) toward the V2X (vehicle to any) scenarios is discussed as an extension of the original vehicular ad hoc network (VANET) concept. The reference architecture of the ITS-station is then introduced by highlighting the roles and the contributions of the main standard development organizations involved in the development and consolidation of the concept. Finally, some consideration on the role of the regulatory environment and the related open issues are reported.