A Comprehensive Review of Computing Paradigms, Enabling Computation Offloading and Task Execution in Vehicular Networks

Road safety, optimized traffic management, and passenger comfort have always been the primary goals of the vehicle networking research community. Advances in computer and communication technologies have made the dream of modern intelligent vehicles a reality through the use of smart sensors, cameras, networking devices, and storage capabilities. Autonomous operation of modern intelligent vehicles requires massive computations where tasks are outsourced. In recent years, various computing paradigms, e.g., mobile cloud computing (MCC), vehicular cloud computing (VCC), multi-access or mobile edge computing (MEC), vehicular edge computing (VEC), vehicular fog computing (VFC), and volunteer computing based VANET (VCBV), have been developed to move computational resources close to the user and handle the delay-sensitive applications of modern intelligent vehicles. Therefore, in this study, we provide a comprehensive overview of all computing paradigms related to vehicular networks. We also present the architectural details, similarities, differences, and key features of each computing paradigm. Finally, we conclude the study with open research challenges in vehicular networks along with future research directions.