Critical applications in vehicular ad hoc/sensor networks

Vehicular ad Hoc Networks (VANETs) have emerged as a promising technology with several applications that may have deep impact on our society. In the past few years, we have witnessed a tremendous growth in this field, with several new techniques and standards having been proposed with the objective of making it easier and safer to drive and transport passengers. Diverse applications are already available that provide information on traffic conditions, the density of vehicles, duration of traffic lights, among many other variables that allow smarter driving decisions to be taken. Moreover, drivers and passengers can download and upload this information as they travel, with the aid of the Road Side Unit (RSUs), some of which are already deployed. RSUs are usually connected to the Internet, and are thus widely available to users and services. Among various kinds of advancements, today's sophisticated vehicles could be equipped with sensor nodes which could monitor and collect the data in sparse and dense regions. These data could be processed for the benefit of community of people, for example, health monitoring and diagnostic systems, safety alarms, intelligent transport systems, and environment monitoring. The vehicles during movement, equipped with sensor nodes, can also collect the data from human body and that data can be processed in collaboration with the other vehicles for various medical purposes. In this case, VANETs can also be used in Body Sensor Networks (BSNs). However, as a new technology emerges, it throws new challenges to the research community. Although many solutions already exist focusing on different target areas, there still remains a need for more efficient solutions which can be used in wide variety of applications. Many industrial and academic institutions have already geared up to provide solutions for the benefits of the community. Moreover, there are many constraints that have to be resolved before providing any standard solution. Some examples of the constraints are; mobility of the nodes, connectivity in sparse and dense regions, failure of nodes, network traffic congestion and interference, etc. The objective of this special issue was to compile papers on various topics in the fields related to the critical applications of Vehicular Ad Hoc/Sensor Networks. With successful dissemination of the call, we received in total 35 high quality submissions from around the globe. Each paper was carefully reviewed by a team of experts in the field. After a two-phase rigorous review process, only 5 papers among the …