A publish/subscribe communication framework for managing electric vehicle charging

Electric Vehicle (EV) based applications have recently received wide interests from both commercial and research communities, thanks to the avoidance of CO ₂ pollution by using electric energy instead of traditional fuel energy. With the deployment of public Charging Stations (CSs), the travelling distance of EVs could be substantially increased by recharging their electric energy during journeys. Different from the existing research on decision making to improve charging performance, in this paper we focus on how necessary dynamic information in relation to the charging service can be efficiently disseminated to on-the-move EVs which potentially require charging at CSs. We propose an efficient communication framework based on Publish/Subscribe (P/S) mechanism to disseminate necessary information of CSs to EVs. Those EVs subscribing to such information could then make their individual decisions to select a desired CS for charging, according to received information such as expected waiting time. A core part of communication framework is the utilization of Road Side Units (RSUs) to bridge the information flow from CSs to EVs, which has been regarded as a type of cost-efficient communication infrastructure. In this context, we introduce two complementary communication modes, namely Push and Pull Modes, in order to enable the required information dissemination operation. Both options are evaluated based on realistic simulation models, in particular on how information freshness can influence the overall charging performance based on a common CS selection strategy.