Mobile Internet Access in FleetNet

Inter-vehicle communication systems play an important role in future road communication scenarios like FleetNet. For such communication scenarios, ad hoc networks offer a promising approach due to their characteristics such as low latency and cost efficiency. While multi-hop ad hoc network communication among vehicles provides for many interesting and important applications (e.g., traveling safety, smoothed traffic flow), users also will be interested in accessing Internet services. This access can be achieved via roadside installed Internet gateways. However, the Internet integration of inter-vehicle communication systems entails several difficulties, such as mobility support, communication efficiency, or the discovery and handover of connections from one gateway to the next. In this paper, we propose a communication architecture that addresses these issues. Our communication architecture combines a proxy-based approach with Mobile IP. Additionally, the architecture integrates the passengers’ mobile devices used within the vehicles, i.e. they are able to access the Internet using the inter-vehicle communication system.