Performance Improvement of Cluster-Based Routing Protocol in VANET

Vehicular ad-hoc NETworks (VANETs) have received considerable attention in recent years, due to its unique characteristics, which are different from mobile ad-hoc NETworks, such as rapid topology change, frequent link failure, and high vehicle mobility. The main drawback of VANETs network is the network instability, which yields to reduce the network efficiency. In this paper, we propose three algorithms: cluster-based life-time routing (CBLTR) protocol, Intersection dynamic VANET routing (IDVR) protocol, and control overhead reduction algorithm (CORA). The CBLTR protocol aims to increase the route stability and average throughput in a bidirectional segment scenario. The cluster heads (CHs) are selected based on maximum lifetime among all vehicles that are located within each cluster. The IDVR protocol aims to increase the route stability and average throughput, and to reduce end-to-end delay in a grid topology. The elected intersection CH receives a set of candidate shortest routes (SCSR) closed to the desired destination from the software defined network. The IDVR protocol selects the optimal route based on its current location, destination location, and the maximum of the minimum average throughput of SCSR. Finally, the CORA algorithm aims to reduce the control overhead messages in the clusters by developing a new mechanism to calculate the optimal numbers of the control overhead messages between the cluster members and the CH. We used SUMO traffic generator simulators and MATLAB to evaluate the performance of our proposed protocols. These protocols significantly outperform many protocols mentioned in the literature, in terms of many parameters.