Vehicle device for a target vehicle and communication management method

A vehicle device for a target vehicle equipped with a communication device using a first line and a second line with respectively different communication methods for data transmission via a wireless network, and offloads data transmission from the first line to the second line, the vehicle device comprising

• at least one of (i) a circuit and (ii) a processor with a memory storing computer program code executable by the processor, the at least one of the circuit and the processor configured to cause the vehicle device to implement:
• an estimation information acquirer configured to acquire estimation information that enables estimation of an offloading wait time according to an encounter probability at which the target vehicle encounters an access point of the wireless network used as the second line;
• a wait time estimator configured to estimate the offloading wait time based on the estimation information acquired by the estimation information acquirer;
• and
• an offloading determiner configured to determine whether or not offloading is performable based on the offloading wait time estimated by the wait time estimator, wherein
• the estimation information acquirer acquires, as the estimation information corresponding to the encounter probability, information on the reach probability between the access points identified from hop records regarding travels of a plurality of vehicles passing through the access points,
• the at least one of the circuit and the processor is further configured to cause the vehicle device to implement:
• a vehicle-side selector configured to select the access point with a highest reach probability of the target vehicle based on information on the reach probability between the access points acquired by the estimation information acquirer;
• and
• a vehicle-side reachable distance identifier configured to identify a reachable distance, which is a distance from the target vehicle, for the access point selected by the vehicle-side selector, and
• the wait time estimator estimates the offloading wait time based on the reachable distance identified by the vehicle-side reachable distance identifier.