Vehicular Networks: A New Challenge for Content-Delivery-Based Applications

A significant number of promising applications for vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) are becoming a reality. Most of these applications require a variety of heterogenous content to be delivered to vehicles and to their on-board users. However, the task of content delivery in such dynamic and large-scale networks is easier said than done. In this article, we propose a classification of content delivery solutions applied to VANETs while highlighting their new characteristics and describing their underlying architectural design. First, the two fundamental building blocks that are part of an entire content delivery system are identified: replica allocation and content delivery. The related solutions are then classified according to their architectural definition. Within each category, solutions are described based on the techniques and strategies that have been adopted. As result, we present an in-depth discussion on the architecture, techniques, and strategies adopted by studies in the literature that tackle problems related to vehicular content delivery networks.