Software-Defined and Fog-Computing-Based Next Generation Vehicular Networks

Vehicular networks have attracted much attention from both industry and academia. Due to the high-speed and complex network topology of vehicles, vehicular networks have become extremely challenging. The development of mobile communication technologies, such as SDN and FC, provides a great platform for vehicular networks. SDN separates the software plane and data plane, which enables efficient management and centralized control of vehicular networks. FC is an extension of cloud computing. By pushing significant storage, control, management, and communication mechanisms onto the network edge or user equipment, FC alleviates the pressure of the core network. Accordingly, we consider a novel SDFC-VeNET architecture in this article. Based on the SDFC-VeNET architecture, mobility management and resource allocation are discussed. Simulation results show the superiority of the presented SDFC-VeNET architecture, as well as the associated handover scheme and resource allocation mechanism. Furthermore, the existing challenges and open issues are discussed.