Routing in taxi and public transport based heterogeneous vehicular networks

Recently, extending the use of Long Term Evolution (LTE) to support vehicular application has attracted more and more research attentions. On one hand, LTE provides a large coverage area, high penetration rate and high-speed terminal support that can benefit vehicular communication in vehicular environments. On the other hand, the non-free wireless communication makes LTE less attractive than the conventional V2V communication technique, Dedicated Short-Range Communication (DSRC) supported by IEEE 802.11p that is free of charge. In this paper, we propose a novel Taxi and Public transport based Heterogeneous Vehicular Network (TPHVN) where taxis and public transport facilities compose the backbone with LTE Device-to-Device (LTE D2D) communication to assist V2V communication. In the TPHVN, taxis, buses and bus stations are equipped with not only DSRC devices that communicate with the private vehicles but also LTE D2D devices for LTE D2D communication in backbone. Over the TPHVN, a novel Taxi and Public transport based heterogeneous vehicular network Fuzzy Routing (TPFR) is proposed. Simulation results show that comparing with well accepted routing protocols in VANETs, TPFR can efficiently boost the delivery ratio of messages and reduce the message delay.