Optical Network-based Clustering Hierarchy for Energy Efficiency in Vehicular Ad Hoc Network

Vehicular ad hoc network (VANET) has attracted more attention for providing safe and efficient traffic management in the modern roads. Performance of the VANET depends on proper routing protocol, mobility management, and efficient inter-vehicular communications. To ensure the optimal data forwarding and energy efficiency in VANET, a suitable network hierarchy is required. In this paper, we propose a new optical network-based clustering hierarchy (ONCH) to improve the quality of services of the VANET. In the proposed scheme, the road side units (RSUs) of a VANET will be divided into several small groups called clusters. In each cluster, an RSU will act as gateway node and each gateway node will be connected to the WiMAX base station through optical fiber. We have analyzed the performance of the proposed ONCH scheme by numerical simulations. The simulated results prove that the ONCH scheme of VANET provides higher energy efficiency than the conventional wireless network-based clustering hierarchy (WNCH) scheme of VANET.