Vehicular Ad Hoc Network (VANET): Enabling Secure and Efficient Transportation System Saira Gillani M. A. Jinnah University Imran Khan M. A. Jinnah University Shahid Qureshi Center for Advanced Studies in Engineering Amir Qayyum M. A. Jinnah University ABSTRACT An ad hoc network consisting of vehicles has emerged as an interesting but challenging domain where lot of new application may find their place. In this paper, a survey of potential applications, medium access control schemes and routing protocols for VANETs is presented. Applicability of various medium access (MAC) schemes including IEEE 802.11p, which is the proposed MAC for VANETs, is also given. In the routing area, various protocols proposed for VANETs from the reactive, proactive, hierarchical and position-based routing schemes are discussed and analyzed. INTRODUCTION VEHICULAR Ad Hoc Networks (VANETs) is a new challenging network environment that pursues the Manuscript received December 16, 2008; revised January 12, 2009. S. Gillani is a member of Center of Research in Networks and Telecommunication (CoReNeT) at M. A. Jinnah University, Islamabad (e-mail: sairagilani@yahoo.com). I. Khan is a member of Center of Research in Networks and Telecommunication (CoReNeT) at M. A. Jinnah University, Islamabad 44000 Pakistan (phone: +92-300- 539-7149; e-mail: imrankhan1984@gmail.com). S. Qureshi is with the Center for Advanced Studies in Engineering, Islamabad, 44000, Pakistan and is a member of Center of Research in Networks and Telecommunication (CoReNeT) (e-mail: mshahidqureshi@gmail.com). A. Qayyum is the head of Center of Research in Networks and Telecommunication (CoReNeT) at M. A. Jinnah University, Islamabad, 44000, Pakistan (e-mail: aqayyum@ieee.org). concept of ubiquitous computing for future. Vehicles equipped with wireless communication technologies and acting like computers will be on our roads soon and this will revolutionize our concept of traveling. VANETs bring lot of possibilities for new range of applications which will not only make our travel safer but fun as well. Reaching to a destination or getting help will be much easier. The concept of VANETs is quite simple: by incorporating the wireless communication and data sharing capabilities, the vehicles can be turned into a network providing similar services to the ones we are used to in our office or home networks. For the wide spread and ubiquitous use of VANETs, a number of technical challenges exist. Several academic and industrial projects were initiated to address these challenges. One of the earliest European projects was FleetNet (Sep 2000 – Dec 2003) [1]. Its objectives were to develop a platform for inter-vehicular communication, implement demonstrator applications and then to standardize the solutions. Some other prominent projects include Network on Wheels (NoW) [2] and CarTALK2000 [3]. Car-to-Car Communication Consortium (C2C-CC) [4] is an umbrella organization overseeing VANET research activities in Europe. It includes many automobile industry members like Daimler, BMW, Audi, Fiat, Renault and some German universities. The overall objective of C2C-CC is to