Internet of Vehicles for Sustainable Smart Cities: Opportunities, Issues, and Challenges

Highlights: What are the main findings? Provides a layered overview of IoV architecture and applications, emphasizing its impact on smart urban mobility and sustainability. Analyzes and classifies evolving inter-vehicle communication models in IoT-driven smart cities and autonomous transport systems. What is the implication of the main finding? This paper presents a comprehensive analysis of the Internet of Vehicles (IoV) within smart and sustainable cities, focusing on its layered architecture, communication models, global market trends and levels of vehicle autonomy (Level 0-5). It also explores current developments, security issues and research challenges to guide future advancements in IoV. Intelligent transport systems are essential for urban residents in large cities, facilitating not only vehicular mobility but also the movement of residents. Urban mobility is a significant concern, particularly in the context of the Internet of Things, where vehicles evolve into intelligent nodes within sensor networks. This convergence of the mobile Internet and the Internet of Vehicles (IoV) redefines urban mobility. In the context of smart cities, it examines the evolving IoV and communication models, unveiling both current and emerging trends. This research paper offers insights into global market trends and conducts bibliographic data analysis to illuminate the present and future potential of the IoV. It highlights IoV applications, the layered architecture, and connected and autonomous vehicle levels (Level 0 to Level 5). The communication model is explained, along with addressing research challenges and future directions. The conclusion summarizes the key findings and emphasizes the main points addressed in the study.