Context-Aware Vehicular Cyber-Physical Systems with Cloud Support: Architecture, Challenges, and Solutions

The advances in wireless communication techniques, mobile cloud computing, and context-aware technologies boost a growing interest in the design, development, and deployment of vehicular networks for emerging applications. This leads to an increasing evolutionary tendency to change from vehicular networks toward cloud-assisted context-aware vehicular cyber-physical systems. In this article, we first propose a multi-layered context-aware architecture and introduce two crucial service components, vehicular social networks and context-aware vehicular security. Then we propose an application scenario regarding the context-aware dynamic parking services by illuminating the cloud-assisted architecture and logic flow. Finally, we investigate the challenges and possible solutions, including context-aware safety hazard prediction, context-aware dynamic vehicle routing, and context-aware vehicular clouds.