NeTS: Small: Proof-of-Concept Study on an Emerging Mobile Data Transportation Network

美国交通部（DoT）要求轻型车辆配备智能交通控制和安全驾驶的通信能力，这引起了人们对开发互联车辆（CV）技术的极大兴趣。然而，美国运输部并没有具体说明应安装哪种通信设备，以及其能力水平。在车辆中部署具有更高计算能力和更大存储容量的更强大的通信设备的前提下，本项目旨在对这种由具有强大设备的车辆组成的新兴网络进行概念验证研究。通过考虑车辆的“无限”电力供应和相对“常规”的车辆机动性，该项目试图证明，具有这种更强大能力的车辆提供了一个新兴的可行的数据传输网络，以补充现有的电信系统。拟议的研究可能会导致进一步开发创新技术，利用车辆传输来自各种新兴物联网（IoT）系统和智能城市应用的呈指数级增长的数据流量。具体来说，这个为期一年的项目旨在展示如何利用配备强大的认知无线电（CR）路由器的轻型车辆，这些路由器具有高计算能力和相对较大的存储容量，以执行频谱感知，处理和存储数据，做出智能决策，并为新兴的物联网系统和智慧城市应用提供机会性传输数据。为了实现这一目标，该项目计划设计一个灵活敏捷的认知网络架构，以有效地利用车辆中增加的功能。在此架构下，一套频谱管理机制将开发从接入的角度和端到端的服务的角度来看。延迟容忍流量将转移到这种新兴的网络，在这种网络中，收获的授权或未授权频谱可以用于机会性地存储-结转-转发数据流量。通过设计各种机会主义数据卸载机制，该项目旨在探索此类数据传输网络的有效性。

The mandate of the US Department of Transportation (DoT) on light-weight vehicles to be equipped with communication capability for intelligent traffic control and safe driving results in a tremendous interest in developing connected vehicles (CV) technology. However, US DoT has not specified what kinds of communication devices with what level of capability are to be installed. Under the premise that more powerful communication devices with higher computational capability and more storage capacity are deployed in vehicles, this project aims to carry out a proof-of-concept study on this emerging network consisting of vehicles with powerful devices. By considering "unlimited" power supplies from vehicles and relatively "regular" vehicular mobility, the project seeks to demonstrate that vehicles with such more powerful capability offer an emerging viable data transportation network to complement existing telecommunications systems. The proposed research potentially leads to further development of innovative technologies in leveraging vehicles to transport exponentially increasing data traffic from various emerging Internet of Things (IoT) systems and smart cities applications. Specifically, this one-year project aims to demonstrate how to leverage light-weight vehicles equipped with powerful cognitive radio (CR) routers with high computational capability and relatively large storage capacity to perform spectrum sensing, processing and storing data, making intelligent decisions, and opportunistically transporting data for emerging IoT systems and smart cities applications. To achieve this goal, the project plans to design a flexible and agile cognitive network architecture to effectively take advantage of the added capability in vehicles. Under this architecture, a suite of spectrum management mechanisms will be developed from both access point of view and end-to-end service perspective. Delay-tolerant traffic will shift to this emerging network where harvested licensed or unlicensed spectrum can be used to opportunistically store-carry-forward data traffic. By designing various kinds of opportunistic data offloading mechanisms, the project seeks to explore the effectiveness of such a data transportation network.