CLUSTERHEAD DEVICE THAT FUNCTIONS AS A GATEWAY BETWEEN VEHICULAR AD-HOC NETWORK AND CELLULAR NETWORK

摘要

It has been assumed up to now with regard to using hybrid networks for motor vehicles that exclusively ad-hoc network-enabled motor vehicles can communicate with other exclusively ad-hoc network-enabled motor vehicles, and that exclusively cellular network-enabled motor vehicles can communicate with other exclusively cellular network-enabled motor vehicles. The invention relates to a possiblilty to improve the communication capability of motor vehicles, with one another, in particular the communication capability of groups, which comprise both ad-hoc network-enabled motor vehicles and cellular network-enabled motor vehicles. To this end, a device (10) according to the invention comprises a clusterhead device (CH ) and is capable of relaying group messages from the cellular network (CNET ) to the ad-hoc network (MANET), and vice versa. This functionality is also referred to as a gateway functionality. However, not every device (10) that comprises a CH-device is activated as CH but only the device that does not receive enough beacon signals emitted by each motor vehicle. It is thus achieved that not too many motor vehicles function as a gateway.