Enhancing Vehicular Ad Hoc Network (VANET) Protocols

Abstract:
Broadcast storms are known to hinder communications on VANETs, which is catastrophic on safety message dissemination (SMD). Several protocols and models have been proposed to address the problem, for which clustering has proven to be helpful. In our previous work, we proposed a cluster merging algorithm, 2F-CM, with a cluster master selection based on two factors – the vehicles number of one-hop neighbors and their speed similarity. Also in prior work, we have proposed different communication chains, directly related to the clustering due to the use of a 5G base station both for cluster merging and for warning messages dissemination. In this work, we re-evaluate all the communication chain models after proposing a new factor for the cluster master election – the estimated received signal power from the base station. Our results show that there is a trade-off between the percentage of informed vehicles and the delays to inform the last vehicles on the network.