VANET protocols for more safety and fluidity in Intelligent Transportation Systems

In recent years, Intelligent Transportation systems (ITS) have attracted many researchers. An ITS ecosystem is mainly composed of three components, the driver, the vehicle and the environment which is divided into static and dynamic. The intelligence in the transportation systems is illustrated by the communication between its components. Three communication scenarios exist, vehicle to vehicle, vehicle to environment and hybrid communication that groups both of the latter scenarios. Safety and fluidity are two major issues to take into consideration in ITS. In this paper the focus is on safety in ITS, because it directly impacts people’s safety. Therefore, the security architecture must be well defined. Thus, Vehicular networks (VANETS), are a special type of ad-hoc network used for communication among the components of the traffic eco-systems. According to the objective of this paper, the most important family of protocols in VANETs, the Wireless Access in the vehicular environment (WAVE), is detailed and discussed.