Vertical Handover in Vehicular Ad-hoc Networks – A Survey

Vehicular Ad-hoc Networks (VANET) representing the preferred network for Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) based on Dedicated Short Range Communications (DSRC) for Vehicle-to-Vehicle communications. In Vehicular Ad-hoc Networks continuous connectivity is a great challenge, due to high vehicle speed and ever changing topology of the network. Future vehicles will be fully networked and equipped with On-board computers with multiple network interface cards and emerging wireless technologies. With Vehicle-to-Vehicle and Vehicle-to-Infrastructure mode users can access the internet. Due to heterogeneous wireless access, Vertical handover is needed to maintain continuous connectivity between the vehicles and infrastructures. This survey paper gives an overview of vertical handover process and review some related studies.