Continuous broadband communication system based on existing open source network tools for vehicular environments

Due to the widespread adoption of Intelligent Transportation Systems, the number of applications used in vehicular environments is growing very quickly. This fact implies a greater consumption of network bandwidth and a competition for network use. Consequently an exhaustive control of the bandwidth consumption is needed to provide Quality of Service according to the demands of certain applications, giving priority to the most relevant data traffic. Moreover, to guarantee the continuous communication in mobile environments (between vehicles and ground control centers) is another target to be tackled. In this paper a software system to provide continuous broadband communication in vehicular environments, as well as other capabilities such as the management of the Quality of Service and priority of applications, transparent change of the active communication link and security of the data transmission, is presented. The remarkable challenge is that has been addressed a solution to this problem not based on a proprietary software development, but by reusing already implemented and tested software utilities, originally designed to be used in several non-mobile environments.