Cloud-enabled Software-Defined Vehicular Networks: Architecture, Applications and Challenges

As one of the significant parts for Internet of Everything (IoE), vehicular networks provide network services for things in intelligent transport systems. In vehicular networks, vehicle can communicate with vehicles, pedestrians and infrastructures (Internet) by exploiting vehicle to everything (V2X) technologies. Nowadays, emerging applications in vehicular networks require more rich resources and more flexible management mode, while existing technologies of vehicular networks fail to provide these capacities. As two promising network technologies, cloud computing and Software-Defined Networking (SDN) are introduced to vehicular networks to solve these problems. In this paper, we introduce the development of cloud-enabled software-defined vehicular networks (cloud-enabled SDVNs) with focus on its architecture, applications and challenges. We discuss the technical advantages of cloud computing and SDN that can be applied to vehicular networks. The architectures of cloud-enabled SDVNs are presented and the components of the architectures are analyzed. We also provide an overview of some typical applications. In addition, discussion of challenges for using cloud computing and SDN for vehicular networks is presented.