Abstract: Vehicle Sensor Networks( VSNS) compose of many vehicles equipped with different types of sensors, which are data centric mobile sensor networks. Compared with traditional wireless sensor networks, the nodes of VSNS move rapidly, leading to intermittent connectivity and frequent topology change, so that data transmissions in VSNS depend on opportunistic transmissions among nodes,which degrades the performance of data delivery. The state of the arts of the research on vehicle sensor networks was discussed. Introduced with the idea of delay tolerant networks and opportunistic networks into VSNs, the hot research issues on vehicle sensor networks were presented.

Key words: Vehicle sensor networks, Data gathering, Intermittent connectivity, Delay tolerant