Providing Adapted Contextual Information in an Overlay Vehicular Network

Current vehicular networks are developed uponcommercial solutions based on cellular networks (CNs) or vehicularad-hoc networks (VANETs), both present in numerousresearch proposals. Current approximations are not enough tocover the communication necessities of several applications atthe same time, and they are not suitable for future vehicularpervasive services. The vehicular network presented in this paperfills the existent gap between solutions lacking in flexibility,mainly supported by an infrastructure deployment, and thosehighly local and distributed, such as sole-VANET approximations.In this manner, an overlay communication platform which canwork over the CN basis has been designed and developed. Thisarchitecture is complemented by an additional support of aninformation system located at the infrastructure side. Moreover,since most of the information received from current notificationservices is not relevant for the driver, an additional subsystem hasbeen devised to provide adapted information to users. This hasbeen carried out by means of an ontology model which representsusers' preferences and contextual information. Finally, using awhole prototype of the telematic platform, the performance ofthis interring process has been evaluated to point out its impacton the system operation