Beaconing support in publish-subscribe middleware for vehicular applications

Vehicular Ad hoc Network (VANET) is a wireless network formed on the fly among vehicles connected by wireless links. A VANET application can learn about the context by acquiring and parsing beacons periodically broadcasted by other vehicles. In this paper we investigate the requirements of the applications that use vehicle beaconing to increase safety of road transportations and to provide drivers with sensitive information about traffic condition. On this topic, an open issue is related to the analysis and management of the beacon stream by means of a suitable middleware. To this aim, we discuss the design of a Publish-Subscribe based middleware for VANET applications, namely ACME, tailored to accomplish suitable queries over the beacons in a flexible and adaptive way, satisfying the applications requirements. Finally, a prototype implementation of ACME is presented.