A Simple and Robust Clustering Scheme for Large-Scale and Dynamic VANETs

Clustering is a promising technique to manage network resources efficiently and, in vehicular communications it is used to group vehicles with similar characteristics managed by a selected vehicle called a Cluster Head (CH). Due to the highly dynamic topology in vehicular networks, a CH selection process becomes a challenging task. Thus, this paper presents a new clustering scheme, namely, Efficient Cluster Head Selection (ECHS) scheme to select the most suitable CHs. The proposed ECHS scheme introduces important conditions pertaining to the methods deployed in constructing clusters before starting the CH selection. For instance, based on the ECHS rules the ideal CH is the one that centralizes the cluster. This is because it will remain connected as long as possible with its neighbors. The ECHS scheme also guarantees proper clustering distribution in the network, so that the distance between two consecutive clusters are adjusted carefully. Such conditions are guaranteed to effectively cluster vehicles in the road and make the ECHS scheme works better than its counterpart. Simulation experiments are conducted to examine the performance of the ECHS and the results demonstrate that the ECHS scheme achieves the design objectives in terms of CH lifetime, Cluster Member Lifetime (CML), Packet Loss Ratio(PLR), Overhead for Clustering(OC), Average Packet Delay (APD), and Cluster Number (CN).