Vehicular Networks

This course will introduce vehicular networks and facilitate a discussion of issues involved in building such networks. These issues include physical communications limitations, special characteristics of vehicular networks, possible applications (collision avoidance, incident notification, etc.), security, user privacy, and driver distraction. One goal of this class is to produce work suitable for submitting to the 2008 ACM International Workshop on Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks (VANET).

There is no textbook for this course. Course material will come from research papers. Staying on top of assigned reading is required.

Course topics will include the following:

introduction to traffic engineering, traffic monitoring
introduction to wireless networks, broadcast communications, ad-hoc networks, mobile ad-hoc networks (MANETs)
vehicle-to-vehicle, vehicle-to-infrastructure communications
vehicular mobility models, simulators
applications (safety, information, entertainment)
US and European initiatives
physical and MAC layer issues (DSRC)
message dissemination and aggregation
routing
security and privacy
human factors, including driver distraction

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Useful Links

Research Methods	Vehicular Networks
ODU Honor Council	JiST/SWANS simulator
The Elements of Style, Fourth Edition, Strunk and White	SWANS User Guide
Writing for Computer Science, Justin Zobel	Traffic Applet
ODU's Writing Tutorial Services (these tutors are only for undergrads, but webpage has great resources)	DSRC page by Lee Armstrong
ODU's Graduate Writing Assistance Program	Mercedes-Benz video on potential uses for DSRC (seems like a marketing video, but still interesting)
Presentation Methods (from CS 410 / Janet Brunelle, instructor)	National ITS Architecture (DSRC)
How to Read a Research Paper by S. Keshav	Vehicle Safety Communications Project Final Report
Some Tips for Reading Research Papers by Tia Newhall	VII Website (links to presentations)
How to Read an Engineering Research Paper by William Griswold	RITA presentations (includes 2008 presentations)
Summary of a Scientific Article, George Mason Biology Dept.
A Referee's Plea by Mark Allman
Library Resources (links for off-campus access to ACM Digital Library and IEEE Xplore)

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