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With the rapid advances of information technology, including computing, sensing, and communication, engineers are looking for creative approaches to migrate wired system applications into wireless domain. Recently, industry has been exploring the deployment of wireless technologies into harsh environments; it is, however, facing many challenges to accommodate its stringent requirements and applications' constraints. With such a trend towards a wireless world and with the theme of easy-to-upgrade and low cost in-vehicle networks, the idea of wireless in-vehicle multiplexed networks becomes even more attractive. This paper reviews different standard wireless protocols such as IEEE 802.11, IEEE 802.15.1/Bluetooth®, and IEEE 802.15.4/ZigBee®. Afterwards, it discusses the potential role of these protocols in the future in-vehicle wireless network. And finally, it provides a performance evaluation of IEEE 802.15.4/ZigBee for in-vehicle networks.

The automobile currently has a number of processors to control different subsystems such as engine controller, transmission controller, ABS controller, lighting controller, entertainment controller, and airbag controller. These subsystems are connected as a single vehicle network. Different vehicle networks can run under different protocols such as CAN, VAN, SCP, DLC, ACP, and J1939. Controller Area Network (CAN) has become the standard for the automotive industry. However, CAN has limited speed to incorporate new applications, such as invehicle multimedia, entertainment, navigation, and computing. A new technology, Media Oriented Systems Transport (MOST), provides high bandwidth to accommodate such applications.