When the Sensors Hit the Roads (Invited Talk)

Summary form only given. Over the past few years, impressive advances in wireless networking and embedded computing have led to the "first generation" of wireless sensor networks. In general, these are used for monitoring or tracking applications characterized by low data rates and static deployments. In this talk, I will motivate what the "second generation" might look like, focusing on mobile sensor networks gathering heterogeneous "media-rich" data. These networks offer the opportunity to sense the world at much higher scale and finer fidelity than their static counterparts, especially over large areas. With hundreds of millions of automobiles and over a billion cell phone-equipped people in the world, cars and humans may turn out to be the vehicles of the world's largest and most dynamic sensor networks in the coming years. This talk will discuss several network architecture challenges in realizing this vision. Meeting these challenges will give us a network architecture that can support a wide range of vehicular network applications, far beyond the area of mobile sensor networks