A Spectrum Aware Mobility Pattern Based Routing Protocol for CR-VANETs

Cognitive radio technology offers an important function in the efficient utilization of the radio spectrum. Besides, it is expected that CR-enabled vehicular ad-hoc networks (CRVANETs) enrich the communication performance of the existing vehicular networks (VANETs). However, to ensure efficient performance in a multi-hop communication, the routing protocol in CR-VANETs needs to consider the autonomous mobility of the vehicles as well as the stochastic availability of the channels. Hence, this paper introduces a spectrum-aware mobility pattern based reactive routing protocol for CR-VANET. The proposed protocol accommodates the dynamic behavior and selects a stable transmission path from a source node to the destination. Therefore, the proposed protocol is outlined as a weighted graph problem where the weight for an edge is measured based on a parameter termed as NHDF (Next-hop Determination Factor). The NHDF implicitly considers mobility patterns of the nodes and channel availability to select the optimum path for communication. Therefore, in the proposed routing protocol, the mobility pattern of a node is defined from the viewpoint of distance, speed, direction, and node’s reliability. Furthermore, the spectrum awareness in the proposed protocol is measured over the number of shared common channels and the channel quality. It is anticipated that the proposed protocol shows efficient routing performance by selecting stable and secured paths from source to destination. Simulation is carried out to assess the performance of the protocol where it is witnessed that the proposed routing protocol outperforms existing ones.