A Geographical Aware Routing Protocol Using Directional Antennas for NDN-VANETs

In Named Data Networking (NDN) content is retrieved based on names instead of locations of hosts. Therefore, NDN is a suitable candidate for content retrieval in Vehicular ad-hoc Networks (VANETs), which are characterized by path breaks due to intermittent connectivity. In an NDN-VANET to avoid path breaks broadcasting every message is considered the most reliable way for content retrieval. In this work, we unicast messages to reduce the usage of network resources, when it is possible. Our work limits the dissemination area of messages by installing directional antennas in vehicles. We develop an algorithm to choose the appropriate directional antenna to unicast a message, allowing vehicles outside of the spreading area of the message to perform other tasks. Moreover, each vehicle performs route discovery to nodes that store content, when the content is not retrieved after a specific time period. Therefore, when necessary, paths are reconfigured to include new vehicles.