AAGV: A Cluster Based Multicast Routing Protocol for Autonomous Aerial and Ground Vehicles Communication in VANET

The Autonomous Ground Vehicles (AGVs) are developed to perform the rescue operations independently for providing safety to human lives such as in mines detection and clearance operations. The performance of these AGVs has been enhanced in our previous work by implementing the Vehicular Ad Hoc Network (VANET) among these vehicles. In this piece of research, the Autonomous Aerial and Ground Vehicles (AAGVs) routing protocol has been proposed, in which the aerial vehicles are introduced to overcome the limitations of AGVs communication for disseminating the Mines Detection Messages (MDMs). Additionally, the cluster based scheme is designed in such a way that the AAGVs protocol can adapt itself in real time without affecting its performance by maintaining stable Inter-Vehicular Communication (IVC) links. The simulation of the proposed protocol in Network Simulator illustrates that the delay and overhead have been reduced. On the other hand, the packet delivery ratio and throughput have been increased by adopting the multicast communication approach.