Multi-agent based stable clustering in VANET

Vehicular Ad-hoc Network (VANET) is part of Mobile Ad-hoc Network (MANET) that facilitates communication between group of vehicles to provide driver safety, traffic updates, entertainment, data sharing etc. Clustering is an efficient method to handle the frequent change in the topology of VANET by means of local co-ordination. We present multi agent based stable clustering to provide stability, which in turn enhance the cluster life time. Proposed approach make use of multi-agent interaction method consists of static and mobile agents to establish the communication between vehicles and RSU. RSU agent responsible to decide the cluster size and select the suitable cluster head based on vehicle speed and connectivity with neighboring nodes. Here we vary the cluster size depending upon vehicle speed, which in turn increases the cluster life time and reduces the routing overhead. After formation of cluster maintenance of cluster is hand over to cluster head agent. The proposed method is simulated in NS2 by considering some of the performance parameters such as vehicle speed, node density, cluster formation time, cluster head selection time, communication range etc.