A WAVE network management model

As the Wireless Access Vehicular Environment (WAVE) defined by IEEE draft standards 802.11p and 1609 moves closer to reality, management of these networks becomes an increasing concern for Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) designers and other stakeholder groups. Much like network security, network management is often an afterthought that gets hastily thrown into the network architectural model only after a fairly large and disruptive operational impact has been experienced. The goal herein is to assist system developers and researchers in avoiding this common design pitfall and heed the lessons learned from large deployments of 802.11a/b/g/n Wi-Fi networks by submitting a viable WAVE network management model for review prior to actual wide scale deployment of these networks. Simply put, let's figure out how to manage this stuff before we deploy it. There will literally be thousands of Roadside Units (RSUs) deployed when this technology reaches its peak and monitoring, management, and configuration of each RSU individually simply does not scale in terms of administrative operations overhead. I have provided a scalable, adaptable, centralized WAVE network management model that can assist network managers in managing these networks. The management model I have developed proposes incorporation of a hardware appliance referred to as a controller and defines use cases for network management software which would utilize cognitive radio and Control and Provisioning of Wireless Access Points (CAPWAP) as part of the centralized management architecture. I will show that centralized management of RSUs is preferable to individual management and that cognitive radio and CAPWAP can be used in the centralized management of these devices.