A Clustering-Based Fast and Stable Routing Protocol for Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks

Abstract

For the sake of improving network performances, i.e. end-to-end delay and packet drop ratio (PDR), in vehicular ad hoc networks (VANET), we propose a clustering-based fast and stable routing (CFSR) protocol. The CFSR protocol introduces a link quality assessment mechanism that evaluates the link quality on road segments between intersections and adopts the end-to-end delay as an evaluation metrics to assign a weight to the link corresponding to each road segment. The delay-sensitive application can directly use this weight as the link quality indicator to directly establish the routing path in the sub-zone by using Dijkstra algorithm. At the same time, the concept of local coordinator (LC) is introduced into the routing protocol to help construct the routing path conveniently and quickly. In addition, it can also avoid the local optimum problem caused by single-step decision and reduce the network transmission delay. In this paper, the Simulation of Urban Mobility (SUMO) and Network Simulation 3 (NS3) are used to simulate this protocol. Simulation results reveal that CFSR protocol can obtain lower end-to-end delay and PDR than those of the AODV and DSDV protocols.