Decentralized Relaying and Performance Analysis in Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks

Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks (VANET) is an important network technology. Relay communication can effectively improve the connectivity and coverage of VANET, especially in distributed environments. Challenges arise from intense collision resulting from inherently synchronized relays. In this paper, we propose a decentralized relay scheme without collecting neighbor nodes' information. Particularly, we design a new score function to prioritize the relays based on their reception quality from source and channel conditions towards intended destination. A closed-form expression for packet delivery ratio (PDR) is derived based on time-out probabilities. Our analyses, validated by simulations, show that the proposed scheme, in terms of PDR, is much better than DAFMAC protocol.