Khaleel Mershad and Hassan Artail Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering American University of Beirut, 1107 2020, Lebanon E-mails: kwm03@aub.edu.lb and hartail@aub.edu.lb © 1995 EXPERT SOFTWARE. INC. Finding a STAR in a Vehicular Cloud I. Introduction T he wide deployment and evolution of wireless communication systems have changed human lives by offering easi- ness and flexibility in using Internet services and various applications. Research- ers have abstracted the idea of Vehicular Ad hoc Networks (VANETs), in which vehicles, equipped with wireless communication devices, positioning systems, and digital maps, act as intelligent machines that com- municate for safety and comfort purposes. Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MITS.2013.2240041 Abstract—The strong capabilities that exist in a Vehicu- lar Ad hoc Network (VANET) has given birth to the con- cept of Vehicular Clouds, in which cloud computing ser- vices are hosted by vehicles that have sufficient resources to act as mobile cloud servers. In this paper, we design a system that enables vehicles in a VANET to search for mobile cloud servers that are moving nearby and dis- cover their services and resources. The system depends on RSUs that act as cloud directories with which mobile cloud servers register. The RSUs share their registration data to enable vehicles to discover and consume the ser- vices of mobile cloud servers within a certain area. We evaluated the proposed system using the ns2 software and demonstrated through comparing the results to another mechanism the feasibility and efficiency of our system in terms of service discovery and service consum- ing delays and packet success ratio. Date of publication: 23 April 2013 IEEE INTELLIGENT TRANSPORTATION SYSTEMS MAGAZINE • 55 • SUMMER 2013 1939-1390/13/$31.00©2013IEEE