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58 Big Data Analytics for Connected Vehicles and Smart Cities Connected and Autonomous Vehicles 59

the two vehicle types. Nevertheless, both types are likely to have a significant
impact on our transportation system and play a central role within a smart city,
while providing new data in the form of probe vehicle data, hence the interest
in explaining both concepts under the auspices of this book.
It is difficult to address big data and analytics and transportation without
taking full account of both connected and autonomous vehicles. Connected
and autonomous vehicles are a major focus for both federal and private sector
investment. With the connected vehicle, the ability to establish a reliable two-
way communication channel between the driver and an information technol-
ogy infrastructure holds the promise of substantial advances in safety, efficiency,
and user experience. There is more than one way for technology to support the
two-way communication link with different approaches having different capa-
bilities and suitability for different applications.
With respect to the autonomous vehicle there are potential gains in safety
and user experience by introducing vehicles that are capable of driving them-
selves. This could be particularly useful regarding freight and transit, where
the driver is not attempting to reach a particular destination but is present as
a requirement for vehicle operation. The autonomous vehicle—discussed in
more detail in Section 4.6—is likely to be introduced on a phased basis with
emigration from driver support and assistance to full autonomous operation.

4.4 What Is a Connected Vehicle?

The connected vehicle essentially involves the use of wireless telecommunica-
tions along with in-vehicle equipment to support a two-way data exchange be-
tween the vehicle and the back office. There are two major approaches to the
establishment and operation of the wireless link between the vehicle and back
office. These can be characterized as follows:

• Wide-area wireless;
• Dedicated short-range communications (DSRC).

The wide-area wireless approach to the connected vehicle, involves the
use of wide-area wireless via cellular wireless services to enable the two-way
communication link between the back office and the vehicle. In this case the
infrastructure to support communications to and from the vehicle is already in
place in the form of wireless networks developed and operated by major carriers
such as Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile. These wireless services are uti-
lized to support cloud-based back office applications. Figure 4.3 illustrates this
cellular wireless approach to the connected vehicle with private-sector data and