Convergence of Software-Defined Vehicular Cloud and 5G Enabling Technologies: A Survey

Abstract

Vehicular cloud computing (VCC) and connected vehicles have prompted the intensive investigation of communication and computing solutions. As an important enabler, software-defined network (SDN) broadly changes the design of vehicle services, from resource allocation to ambitious autonomous cars. However, current VCC architectures face challenges that hinder the vision of providing reliable services to connected vehicles. As a result, deploying VC services using SDN network has emerged as a viable option. Therefore, software-defined VC architecture (SDVC) dynamically manages the control and resource utilization of VC by centralizing the overall knowledge. In addition, SDN stands as the representative technique of virtual resources and network function virtualization (NFV). NFV is integrated into SDVC frameworks to design extended SDVC (ESDVC) for dynamic, adaptive VC maintenance, VC network slicing management, and to meet constraint requirements such as network latency and reliable connectivity. This paper presents and discusses: (1) the architecture scenario of both SDVC and ESDVC; (2) the effective deployment methods enabling NFV and network slicing (NS) frameworks to customize VC frameworks; (3) challenges and future concepts of more VC services based on ESDVC architecture. From this survey, we believe readers would find relevant methods for realigning information dispersed across the SDVC, fifth generation (5G)-based VC, and NS domains and comprehending the relationships between these technologies while encouraging further debate on the fusion of 5G enabling technologies over SDVC to enable VC network slicing.