Context-Aware Support for Geographical Routing Protocols

Efficient protocols for data packet delivery in Vehicular Ad-hoc NETworks (VANETs) are crucial to guarantee the correct forwarding of data. However, communication in VANETs is a challenging task not only for the high mobility of the vehicles, but as recent studies have shown, there is a negative impact on protocol performances caused by an obstacle such as another vehicle in the line-of-sight (LOS). Many different routing protocols were presented in the last years, but only few of them were considering the effect of non line-of-sight (NLOS) propagation. In this work, we present a new solution to improve the data packet delivery ratio considering the problems caused by a high mobility and NLOS condition. Our proposal can be integrated in every position-based routing protocol. In fact, our method creates a support context awareness of neighbors before letting the protocol choose the next hop, without interfering with the specific logic. Simulation results of our context-aware version have been compared with the original protocols and with a modified version in accordance with the principle that every violation of LOS involves a discard of the packet: our solution always perform better in terms of packet delivery ratio and delay.