Title: Design of a safety-critical geocast API for vehicular coordination

Authors: Marco Slot; Mélanie Bouroche; Vinny Cahill

Addresses: Distributed Systems Group, School of Computer Science and Statistics, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin 2, Ireland. ' Distributed Systems Group, School of Computer Science and Statistics, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin 2, Ireland. ' Distributed Systems Group, School of Computer Science and Statistics, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin 2, Ireland

Abstract: With the development of autonomous driving systems and vehicular networks, vehicles will gain the possibility of taking driving decisions and coordinating them with each other. A suitable communication primitive for this type of application is geocast. Unfortunately, current geocast techniques do not address the reliability problems that arise in what is a safety-critical application domain. Communication failures are difficult to detect, not only due to an unreliable communication channel, but also particularly due to the changing presence of vehicles in the target area. Dealing with these challenges requires an integrated approach, exploiting communication, sensing and driving rules. In this paper, we present the API of a safety-critical geocast service that allows the sender of a message to reliably confirm reception through feedback and spatial membership. We specify the service based on the requirements of the application domain and the limitations of the environment.

Keywords: vehicular networks; safety-critical geocast; membership service; autonomous driving; vehicle coordination; application programming interface; API; feedback; spatial membership; communications.

DOI: 10.1504/IJVICS.2011.044262

International Journal of Vehicle Information and Communication Systems, 2011 Vol.2 No.3/4, pp.193 - 212

Published online: 14 Dec 2011 *

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