Platoon as a Mobile Vehicular Cloud

A Vehicular Cloud (VC) is a group of connected vehicles in which vehicles offer their computational, data storage, sensor and communication resources as services to others. One key functionality of VCs is so called cloud directory, where vehicles in and around VCs can register their own services as well as looking up the services offered by other vehicles. In this paper, we investigate the feasibility of using vehicle platoons as mobile vehicular clouds where platoons act as cloud directories that bridge service providers and service users. Extensive simulations in different vehicle densities and mobilities indicate that cluster-based mobile vehicular clouds may suffer from low service discovery rate and high delay due to the dynamicity of vehicles. Platoon-based mobile vehicular clouds, on the other hand, can improve the efficiency in terms of service discovery and selection of the most suitable cloud directory. This is because platoon maneuvers are managed by a protocol which makes the platoon movements stable and predictable. We show that service discovery rate and delay can be improved significantly by using platoons.