Vehicular ad hoc network (VANET) is an emerging new technology integrating ad hoc network, wireless LAN (WLAN) and cellular technology to achieve intelligent inter-vehicle communications and improve road traffic safety and efficiency. VANETs are distinguished from other kinds of ad hoc networks by their hybrid network architectures, node movement characteristics, and new application scenarios. Therefore, VANETs pose many unique networking research challenges, and the design of an efficient routing protocol for VANETs is very crucial. In this article, we discuss the research challenge of routing in VANETs and survey recent routing protocols and related mobility models for VANETs.

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Routing in vehicular ad hoc networks: A survey

Recent advances in hardware, software, and communication technologies are enabling the design and implementation of a whole range of different types of networks that are being deployed in various environments. One such network that has received a lot of interest in the last couple of years is the Vehicular Ad-Hoc Network (VANET). VANET has become an active area of research, standardization, and development because it has tremendous potential to improve vehicle and road safety, traffic efficiency, and convenience as well as comfort to both drivers and passengers. Recent research efforts have placed a strong emphasis on novel VANET design architectures and implementations. A lot of VANET research work have focused on specific areas including routing, broadcasting, Quality of Service (QoS), and security. We survey some of the recent research results in these areas. We present a review of wireless access standards for VANETs, and describe some of the recent VANET trials and deployments in the US, Japan, and the European Union. In addition, we also briefly present some of the simulators currently available to VANET researchers for VANET simulations and we assess their benefits and limitations. Finally, we outline some of the VANET research challenges that still need to be addressed to enable the ubiquitous deployment and widespead adoption of scalable, reliable, robust, and secure VANET architectures, protocols, technologies, and services.

Vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETS): status, results, and challenges

Routing of data in a vehicular ad hoc network is a challenging task due to the high dynamics of such a network. Recently, it was shown for the case of highway traffic that position-based routing approaches can very well deal with the high mobility of network nodes. However, baseline position-based routing has difficulties to handle two-dimensional scenarios with obstacles (buildings) and voids as it is the case for city scenarios. In this paper we analyze a position-based routing approach that makes use of the navigational systems of vehicles. By means of simulation we compare this approach with non-position-based ad hoc routing strategies (dynamic source routing and ad-hoc on-demand distance vector routing). The simulation makes use of highly realistic vehicle movement patterns derived from Daimler-Chrysler's Videlio traffic simulator. While DSR's performance is limited due to problems with scalability and handling mobility, both AODV and the position-based approach show good performances with the position-based approach outperforming AODV.

A routing strategy for vehicular ad hoc networks in city environments

In this paper, we tackle one fundamental problem in Underwater Sensor Networks (UWSNs): robust, scalable and energy efficient routing. UWSNs are significantly different from terrestrial sensor networks in the following aspects: low bandwidth, high latency, node float mobility (resulting in high network dynamics), high error probability, and 3-dimensional space. These new features bring many challenges to the network protocol design of UWSNs. In this paper, we propose a novel routing protocol, called vector-based forwarding (VBF), to provide robust, scalable and energy efficient routing. VBF is essentially a position-based routing approach: nodes close to the “vector” from the source to the destination will forward the message. In this way, only a small fraction of the nodes are involved in routing. VBF also adopts a localized and distributed self-adaptation algorithm which allows nodes to weigh the benefit of forwarding packets and thus reduce energy consumption by discarding the low benefit packets. Through simulation experiments, we show the promising performance of VBF.

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VBF: vector-based forwarding protocol for underwater sensor networks

This paper presents a class of routing protocols called road-based using vehicular traffic (RBVT) routing, which outperforms existing routing protocols in city-based vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs). RBVT protocols leverage real-time vehicular traffic information to create road-based paths consisting of successions of road intersections that have, with high probability, network connectivity among them. Geographical forwarding is used to transfer packets between intersections on the path, reducing the path's sensitivity to individual node movements. For dense networks with high contention, we optimize the forwarding using a distributed receiver-based election of next hops based on a multicriterion prioritization function that takes nonuniform radio propagation into account. We designed and implemented a reactive protocol RBVT-R and a proactive protocol RBVT-P and compared them with protocols representative of mobile ad hoc networks and VANETs. Simulation results in urban settings show that RBVT-R performs best in terms of average delivery rate, with up to a 40% increase compared with some existing protocols. In terms of average delay, RBVT-P performs best, with as much as an 85% decrease compared with the other protocols.

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VANET Routing on City Roads Using Real-Time Vehicular Traffic Information

Existing position-based unicast routing algorithms which forward packets in the geographic direction of the destination require that the forwarding node knows the positions of all neighbors in its transmission range. This information on direct neighbors is gained by observing beacon messages each node sends out periodically. Due to mobility, the information that a node receives about its neighbors becomes outdated, leading either to a significant decrease in the packet delivery rate or to a steep increase in load on the wireless channel as node mobility increases. In this paper, we propose a mechanism to perform position-based unicast forwarding without the help of beacons. In our contention-based forwarding scheme (CBF) the next hop is selected through a distributed contention process based on the actual positions of all current neighbors. For the contention process, CBF makes use of biased timers. To avoid packet duplication, the first node that is selected suppresses the selection of further nodes. We propose three suppression strategies which vary with respect to forwarding efficiency and suppression characteristics. We analyze the behavior of CBF with all three suppression strategies and compare it to an existing greedy position-based routing approach by means of simulation with ns-2. Our results show that CBF significantly reduces the load on the wireless channel required to achieve a specific delivery rate compared to the load a beacon-based greedy forwarding strategy generates.

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Contention-based forwarding for mobile ad-hoc networks

On this paper we investigate the use of ad-hoc routing algorithms for the exchange of data between vehicles There are two main aspects that are of interest in this context: the specific characteristics of ad-hoc networks formed by vehicles and the applicability of existing ad-hoc routing schemes to networks that display these characteristics In order to address both aspects we generate realistic vehicular movement patterns of highway traffic scenarios using a well validated traffic simulation tool Based on these patterns we show that the characteristics of vehicular ad-hoc networks are quite different from the frequently used random waypoint model We then proceed to evaluate the performance of a reactive ad-hoc routing protocol (DSR) and of a position-based approach (greedy forwarding as done in GPSR) in combination with a simple reactive location service Our analysis suggests that for vehicular networks where communication spans more than 2 or 3 hops position-! based ad-hoc routing has significant advantages over reactive non-position-based approaches both in the number of successfully delivered packets and in routing overhead

A comparison of routing strategies for vehicular ad-hoc networks

We present and analyze a reactive location service RLS for mobile ad hoc networks. RLS provides a mobile node in a wireless ad-hoc network with the means to inquire the current geographical position of another node on-demand and can be used as a building block for location-based routing. We provide a comparison of RLS to an ideal omniscient location service as well as to the complex Grid Location Service (GLS). In addition, we compare the performance of greedy location-based routing in combination with RLS to the performance of a non-location-based ad hoc routing approach, namely Dynamic Source Routing (DSR). DSR was chosen for the comparison since RLS can be considered an adaptation of DSR\'s route discovery mechanisms to the location-based domain. We also introduce and study possible optimizations for RLS, in particular caching, random re-broadcast jitter, and re-broadcast suppression. The quantitative results of our NS-2 simulation study show a very good perform! ance of RLS combined with greedy routing, outperforming GLS and DSR for scenarios with high mobility and high node density.

A Reactive Location Service for Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

Communication between vehicles is likely to be one key area where mobile ad-hoc networks will be used in the near future. Currently there are several projects ([1, 3]) that investigate this application area, while car manufacturers and their suppliers aim at the development of products within the next few years. This raises the question what kind of routing algorithm is suited for communication between vehicles. Existing performance studies for various ad-hoc routing protocols do not use movement patterns which resemble the movement of cars and are thus not well suited to answer this question. We have conducted an extensive simulation study based on realistic vehicle movement patterns. Our main aim was to investigate how a topology-based approach compares to a location-based routing scheme when applied to vehicular networks. As representatives we have chosen DSR [4] as a topology-based approach and GPSR [5] complemented with a simple location service as a location-based scheme. For a general discussion of topology-based and location-based ad-hoc routing please refer to [2] and [6]. Vehicular ad-hoc networks have several unique characteristics. The main challenge is the high speed with which nodes move in respect to each other. If oncoming traffic is included in the forwarding of packets, then relative speeds of 250 km/h to 300 km/h are common. This implies a very high rate of topology changes. Also it is not clear if one single partition spans sufficient distance to enable meaningful applications such as emergency warnings or vehicle-to-vehicle entertainment. On the other hand it is safe to assume that battery power is not an issue for vehicular ad-hoc networks. Location-based approaches further benefit from the fact that vehicles are aware of their geographical positions through the use of on-board navigation systems.

Michael Käsemann

Papers

Contention-based forwarding for mobile ad-hoc networks

A comparison of routing strategies for vehicular ad-hoc networks

A Reactive Location Service for Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

Location-based routing for vehicular ad hoc networks

MobiCom poster: location-based routing for vehicular ad-hoc networks