LDAOR - Location and Direction Aware Opportunistic Routing in Vehicular Ad hoc Networks

Routing in Vehicular Ad hoc Networks (VANETs) has found significant attention because of its unique features such as lack of energy constraints and high-speed vehicles applications. Besides, since these networks are highly dynamic, design process of routing algorithms suitable for an urban environment is extremely challenging. Appropriate algorithms could be opportunistic routing (OR) where traffic transmission is performed using the store-carry-forward mechanism. An efficient OR mechanism, called Location and Direction Aware Opportunistic Routing (LDAOR), is proposed in this paper. It is based on the best neighbor node selection by using vehicles positions, vehicles directions, and prioritization of messages from buffers, based on contact histories and positions of neighbor nodes to destination. In LDAOR, when multiple nodes make contact with a carrier node, the closest neighbor node to destination is selected as the best forwarder. However, when only one node makes contact with the carrier node, the message is delivered to it if it moves toward the destination. Using the ONE simulator, the obtained performance evaluation results show that the LDAOR operates better than conventional OR algorithms. The LDAOR not only increases delivery rate, but also reduces network overhead, traffic loss, and number of aborted messages. Keywords—carry-and-forward mechanism, contact history knowledge, direction and location aware routing, opportunistic routing, vehicular ad hoc networks.