Virtual access points for vehicular networks

This paper introduces the concept of Virtual Access Points (VAPs) for wireless Vehicular Ad-hoc Networks (VANETS). This new technique allows data dissemination among vehicles, thus extending the reach of roadside access points to uncovered road areas. Each vehicle that receives a message from an Access Point (AP) stores this message and rebroadcasts it into non covered areas. This extends the network coverage for non time critical messages. The VAP role is transparent to the connected nodes, and designed to avoid interference since each operates on a bounded region outside any AP. The experiments show the presented mechanism of store and forward at specific positions present a gain, in term of all the evaluated parameters.