Hierarchy-based monitoring of Vehicular Delay-Tolerant Networks

Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks (VANETs) are mobile networks that extend over vast areas and have intense node mobility. These characteristics lead to frequent delays and disruptions. A solution is to employ the Delay Tolerant Network (DTN) paradigm. However, the frequent disruptions as well as the delay and reliability constraints of certain VANET applications hinder the employment of both conventional and DTN-based management architectures. This paper tackles monitoring, one of the tasks of network management. We describe a hierarchical architecture that copes with near real-time as well as non real-time monitoring tasks. The proposed solution is evaluated using simulations, where we measure the delay and delivery rates of the monitoring data. The results show that the proposed solution reduces the delivery delay and increases the chances that a notification will be delivered on time to its destination.