Recent widespread use of computer and wireless communication technologies has increased the demand of data services via wireless channels. However, providing high data rate in wireless system is expensive due to many technical and physical limitations. Unlike voice service, data service can tolerate delays and allow burst transfer of information, thus, an alternative approach had to be formulated. This approach is known as ???Infostation.??? Infostation is an inexpensive, high speed wireless disseminator that features discontinuous coverage and high radio transmission rate by using many short-distance high bandwidth local wireless stations in a large terrain. As opposed to ubiquitous networks, each infostation provides independent wireless connectivity at relative shorter distance compare to traditional cellular network. However, due to the discontinuous nature of infostation network, there is no data service available between stations, and the clients become completely disconnected from the outside world. During, the disconnected period, the clients have to access information locally. Thus, the need for a good wireless network caching scheme has arisen. In this dissertation, we explore the use of the infostation model for disseminating and caching of data. Our initial approach focuses on large datasets that exhibit hierarchical structure. In order to facilitate information delivery, we exploit the hierarchical nature of the file structure, then propose generic content scheduling and cache management strategies for infostations. We examine the performance of our proposed strategies with the network simulator Qualnet. Our simulation results demonstrate the improvement in increasing the rate of successful data access, thus alleviating excessive waiting overheads during disconnected periods. Moreover, our technique allows infostations to be combined with traditional cellular networks and avoid accessing data via scarce and expensive wireless channel for the purpose of cost reduction.

Recent widespread use of computer and wireless communication technologies has increased the demand of data services via wireless channels. However, providing high data rate in wireless system is expensive due to many technical and physical limitations. Unlike voice service, data service can tolerate delays and allow burst transfer of information, thus, an alternative approach had to be formulated. This approach is known as ???Infostation.??? Infostation is an inexpensive, high speed wireless disseminator that features discontinuous coverage and high radio transmission rate by using many short-distance high bandwidth local wireless stations in a large terrain. As opposed to ubiquitous networks, each infostation provides independent wireless connectivity at relative shorter distance compare to traditional cellular network. However, due to the discontinuous nature of infostation network, there is no data service available between stations, and the clients become completely disconnected from the outside world. During, the disconnected period, the clients have to access information locally. Thus, the need for a good wireless network caching scheme has arisen. In this dissertation, we explore the use of the infostation model for disseminating and caching of data. Our initial approach focuses on large datasets that exhibit hierarchical structure. In order to facilitate information delivery, we exploit the hierarchical nature of the file structure, then propose generic content scheduling and cache management strategies for infostations. We examine the performance of our proposed strategies with the network simulator Qualnet. Our simulation results demonstrate the improvement in increasing the rate of successful data access, thus alleviating excessive waiting overheads during disconnected periods. Moreover, our technique allows infostations to be combined with traditional cellular networks and avoid accessing data via scarce and expensive wireless channel for the purpose of cost reduction.

Vehicular Ad-hoc Network (VANET) is a special application of the Mobile Ad-hoc Network (MANET) for managing road traffic and substantially contributes to the development of Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS). VANET was introduced as a standard for data communication between moving vehicles with and without fixed infrastructure. It aims to support drivers by improving safety and driving comfort as a step towards constructing a safer, cleaner and a more intelligent environment. Nowadays, vehicles are manufactured equipped with a number of sensors and devices called On Board Units (OBU) assisting the vehicle to sense the surrounding environment and then process the context information to effectively manage communication with the surrounding vehicles and the associated infrastructure. A number of challenges have emerged in VANET that have encouraged researchers to investigate this concept further. Many of the recent studies have applied different technologies for intelligent parking management. However, despite all the technological advances, researchers are no closer to developing a system that enables drivers to easily locate and reserve a parking space. Limited resources such as energy, storage space, availability and reliability are factors which could have contributed to the lack success and progress in this area. The task then is to close these gaps and present a novel solution for parking. This research intends to address this need by developing a novel architecture for locating and reserving a parking space that best matches the driver's preferences and vehicle profile without distracting the driver. The simple and easy-to-use mechanism focuses on the domain of an intelligent parking system that exploits the concept of InfoStation (IS) and context-aware system creating a single framework to locate and reserve a parking space. A three tier network topology comprising of vehicles, IS and the InfoStation Centre (ISC) has been proposed as the foundation of the on-street parking system architecture. The thesis attempts to develop the architecture of a parking management solution as a comfort-enhancing application that offers to reduce congestion related stress and improve the driver experience by reducing the time it takes to identify and utilise a parking space that is available.