A presence-based architecture for a gateway to integrate Vehicular Ad-hoc Networks (VANETs), the IP Multimedia Subsystems (IMS) and Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs)

On one hand, IP Multimedia Subsystems (IMS) are a research area that has been gaining attention from the research community. It aims to provide cellular access to all Internet services. It is a control architecture on the top of the IP layer whose goal is dependent on the provision of the Quality of Service (QoS), integrated services and fair charging scheme throughout standard interfaces. On the other hand, Vehicular Ad-hoc Networks (VANETs) are a new communication paradigm that enables the wireless communication between vehicles moving with high speeds, as well as the vehicles and the road side equipments found along the roads. This opened the door to develop several new applications like, traffic engineering, traffic management, dissemination of emergency information to avoid critical situations, comfort and entertainment and other user applications. Moreover, VANETs are a sub-class of mobile ad-hoc networks; the performance of the communication depends on how better the routing takes place in the network. Routing of data depends on the routing protocols being used in the network. Combining the capabilities of IMS world with the VANET world opens the door to deploy a wide range of novel multimedia services. This dissertation proposes a presence-based architecture for the integration of IMS with VANETs. The presence of the middleware is used to make an instantaneous awareness of the VANETs changes as well as of the IMS format and to select the best delivery strategy between the two architectures. The gateway which is the heart of our architecture is an overlay built on the top of the IMS as well as the VANETs.