Connected Vehicle Technical Insights: Vehicle Applications and Wireless Interoperability: Heterogeneous Networks, “Multi-­‐Path” Applications and their Impact on Transportation

The original designers of Transmission Control Protocol-Internet Protocol (TCP-IP) never imagined that one day wireless mobile devices may roam, changing location or paths in the middle of a communication session. During roaming, data communications break down and must be reestablished once the user reestablishes a single network pathway – a process completed once a device leaves one wireless area network and connects to another. The original designers also did not imagine that a mobile device might be connected to multiple wired or wireless networks simultaneously. To address this opportunity, the Multi-Path TCP standard was established in an ongoing effort of the Internet Engineering Task Force's (IETF) Multi-Path TCP working group, which aims at allowing a TCP connection to use multiple communications paths, known as inverse multiplexing. This technical insight report suggests that devices and networks may soon incorporate wireless inverse multiplexing standards like Multi-Path TCP-IP and/or possibly other schemes in large numbers. This report describes the momentum behind these technologies, and some of the technical and operational challenges to widespread adoption. The report also suggests that if these challenges are overcome, widespread adoption of standards such as Multi-Path TCP may positively influence the evolution of the vehicle-infrastructure communications architecture as envisioned within the U.S. Department of Transportation’s (USDOT) Connected Vehicle program. In 2014, USDOT’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) initiated a rulemaking process that may result in a rulemaking proposal to create a new Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard (FMVSS) which would require vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communication capability for light vehicles.