Current Projects

Extending the Middlesex VANET Research Testbed to the A41

The VANET Research Group is working with Mobius Networks, Transport for London (TfL) and the Department for Transport (DfT) to extend the Middlesex Testbed onto the A41 (Watford Way), which is situated behind its Hendon Campus. This extended testbed will be used to look at the interaction between urban and motorway traffic, traffic congestion and optimum deployment strategies including mesh networking between RSUs. We also want to integrate the OBU with the Car Area Network (CAN) and the Electronic Control Unit (ECU). The resulting data will be analysed to monitor the state of the vehicles as they move around.

Building a cheap OBU

In order for each vehicle to have a VANET-type device, the cost of the OBU needs to be reduced. Currently OBUs cost around $1000 (USD), which is around £700. We need to get this cost down to between £100 and £200. The plan is to get a cheaper hardware platform such as a Raspberry Pi and port the IEEE 802.11p stack to it. We would need to buy a licence to use an IEEE 802.11p stack from one of the VANET manufacturers.

A Visual-Analytics and Communication System for VANETs

In order to really benefit from the new work being done on VANET Testbeds, it is necessary to be able to display large amounts of information in real-time in a way that would allow traffic personnel to make rapid decisions on the movement of traffic or to react quickly to accidents or major disasters. The idea here is to use the VANET system itself to handle these situations. So the RSUs can communicate directly with the OBU about things that are happening in the vicinity of the vehicle and beyond. RSUs can also be used to propagate information. This would require the development of a Visual-Analytics and Communication System using VANET Clouds. The system can be tested using a disaster management scenario.