“FleetNet-Internet on the Road” was (it lastet from 2001 to 2003) funded by the German Bundesministerimum für Bildung und Forschung BMBF and an industrial consortium. The main aim of FleetNet is to develop technologies for the direct and cost effective communication between vehicles (e.g. cars and trucks) in an ad-hoc, i.e. potentially multi-hop fashion. While cars can benefit in multiple ways from communication capabilities, the most important considered are applications increasing the vehicle safety and applications gathering information about road status. Another application scenario was the connection of a vehicle to the internet in a multi-hop fashion.

PI4s part of FleetNet was to design and evaluate algorithms for Inter-Vehicle-Communications. Furthermore, we designed the actual communication system for field tests and demonstrations and did most of the implementation work. In all of this, we closely cooperated with NECs network laboratories, to which we were sub-contractors.

Network-on-Wheels (NoW) is a project that is funded by the German "Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung (BMB+F)" and an industrial consortium.

The main goal of NoW is to develop technologies in the area of inter-vehicle communication based on ad-hoc networking principles. Within the project, the "Lehrstuhl für Praktische Informatik IV" of the University of Mannheim serves as a subcontractor of "NEC Deutschland GmbH" in cooperation with the "Forschungsbereich Dezentrale Systeme und Netzdienste" of the Karlsruhe Technical University.

For a better view on the general project, we recommend to visit the local homepage or the global project home.