DA2RF: A data aggregation algorithm by restricting forwarders for VANETs

The vehicular Ad Hoc networks (VANETs) has attracted tremendous interest in recent years. In VANETs, how to deal with the distribution of vast quantity of information that comes from different locations is a key problem for diverse applications. Data aggregation technique is born to solve redundant or distributed data problem to improve communication efficiency. We analyze the consequences caused by collisions in VANETs on throughput. Based on these analysis, we propose an infrastructure-free data aggregation algorithm by restricting forwarders (DA2RF) to limit the number of forwarders in VANETs so that transmission collisions can be avoided as much as possible. We also introduce two strategies called beacon-identification and beacon-ignorance to implement DA2RF. DA2RF requires little control overhead and costs negligible amount of computing resources. In addition, DA2RF will not affect network connectivity or delivery ratio. Simulation results show that there is 20% improvement in overall throughput when vehicle density is high.