Information-Centric Networking for Connected Vehicles: A Survey and Future Perspectives

In the connected vehicle ecosystem, a high volume of information-rich and safety-critical data will be exchanged by roadside units and onboard transceivers to improve the driving and traveling experience. However, poor-quality wireless links and the mobility of vehicles highly challenge data delivery. The IP address-centric model of the current Internet barely works in such extremely dynamic environments and poorly matches the localized nature of the majority of vehicular communications, which typically target specific road areas (e.g., in the proximity of a hazard or a point of interest) regardless of the identity/address of a single vehicle passing by. Therefore, a paradigm shift is advocated from traditional IP-based networking toward the groundbreaking information-centric networking. In this article, we scrutinize the applicability of this paradigm in vehicular environments by reviewing its core functionalities and the related work. The analysis shows that, thanks to features like named content retrieval, innate multicast support, and in-network data caching, information-centric networking is positioned to meet the challenging demands of vehicular networks and their evolution. Interoperability with the standard architectures for vehicular applications along with synergies with emerging computing and networking paradigms are debated as future research perspectives.