Where Am I?

No new term emerges out of thin air. Just like the now-famous “cloud computing” — a few years ago it was called grid computing, before that parallel computing, and before that…

My main research at PolyU? If I had to apply one of those trendy domestic buzzwords, it would be “Internet of Vehicles,” which is supposedly a crucial part of the even trendier “Internet of Things.”

I’ve been at PolyU for two months, mostly reading papers, organizing my thoughts, and getting up to speed. I have to admit I’ve fallen behind. Three years of grad school, three years of work — essentially cut off from research. I participated in, even led, plenty of projects, but they were only “projects,” not “research projects” (because there was no real research issue. Perhaps in China, research is focused on projects — as long as you get the funding, who cares if there’s a research issue?). At best, I was a high-level coder.

Tonight after dinner, I spent some time organizing the literature I’ve been reading. At least I’ve sorted out some of the terminology. I drew a diagram that roughly shows where my work fits in. It might not be right — it’s still early days. Call it V1; revisions will come later. See below. Click the small image for a larger one (copyrighted — if anyone wants to use this diagram for presentations or papers, let me know first).

My work is roughly in the blue box. I coined the term myself: Wireless Vehicular Sensor Network. It’s the combination of WSN and vehicular systems. Or maybe WSN applied in vehicular environments? (Discussed this with my advisor, who said “environments a weird word, don’t use it casually.”)

The so-called “Internet of Vehicles” wasn’t born overnight. It evolved from wireless networks to Wireless Ad Hoc networks, to MANET, to VANET, to WSN with sensors (collecting vehicle status), to WSAN with control systems (controlling vehicles), etc. It’s the natural result of many enabling technologies maturing.

Of course, what domestic companies currently call “Internet of Vehicles” is basically a car with a cellular network like 3G connecting to their servers. I don’t think that’s any different from putting a laptop with 3G in a car. It’s at most V2I — I don’t see anything revolutionary about it. Maybe we just see things differently.

Of course, this diagram is just one way of categorizing things. There could be more dimensions. I’ll organize more when I have time.